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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



SONNETS 

James Vila Blake 



Private Edition 

CHICAGO 
J898 



.v- 



24575 

■Copyright, 1898, by 
James Vila Blake. 



TWO COPIES REC-IVEO. 



'( FEB « 4 1899 ]) 






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THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 

TO A RADIANCE of Faith, Hope and Love, of sunny quaint 

Cheerfulness, brave Constancy and womanly 

Wisdom, clothed with the 

Name of 

Clara Hamilton Mahony 



T dedicate to tbee this little book: 
tbou knowest 'tis the coining of my heart— 
to me most costly gold. Reading '$ tby part; 
But less witb eyes tban witb tby love to look, 
liere there be things that run like any brook, 
Babbling with ioy t and here it is the art 
Of artless song to count the tears that start 
Trom memory's eyes, revisiting a nook 
Of vanished love. friend, the precious things 
Chat were, and now are not; yet dearer more 
that were not once, but now shall be for aye. 
therefore my verse not false but faithful sings : 
If sad sometimes, yet like to glistening ore. 
Deep in its black reflecting golden day. 



A LETTER. 



A LETTER. 

Beloved Friends: 

Much was I perplexed for a while bow I might say aU 
I wished to you and yet escape the critic's performing and 
the noise of his populace who answer his '' Plaudite.'* 
For I was determined to write to you with all my freedom, 
if I could, and was willing to suffer somewhat for it if I 
pleased you still more; yet I shrank, if I must confess so 
much, from bringing into our company such as know 
neither you nor me, hut are ready to ''smile a little smile" 
{'tis so one of them expressed herself to me — see Sonnet 
Ixxxvii) at some forgetful touch of nature or fluency 
of taste. Therefore I was at a stand, as I have said, 
bow I could unfold me to you as my heart would, yet 
avoid the arching eyebrows of the cold, the too knowing, 
the gathered-iLp, the measured-off, every manner of ''unco' 
guid " — in short, all kinds of the unacquainted. Sud- 
denly it occurred to me that I could make an edition of 
my book specially for you, not to be sold, and in this I 
could say what I would in this letter and in notes not to 
be put in the edition for the shops ; and then I enlarged 
my hopes to the making of a better and large-paper edition 
for you, which I have done, limiting it to two hundred 
and twenty-five numbered and autograph copies, a love- 
offering to you ; in which alone I print this letter and 



2 

the " Notes for my Friends." Herein surely I am secure; 
for in private talk with my friends I may say what I 
please, and " 'tis nobody's business " but yours and 
mine. 

As to the critics, one may avoid them in the same way 
as one may hold a boar in small esteem, yet must consider 
to escape his tusks ; for however little respe^able the ani- 
mal, his teeth may score tender flesh all the same. " The 
bullying omniscience'' of the gentry called critics is such 
an amazing thing as passes beyond t/je bounds wherein 
surprise is a pleasure — unless indeed we suspeSi that how- 
ever solemn a face they keep to the puhlic, they make merry 
over their craft among themselves. Here shoots in mem- 
ory a pleasant story of them to "point the moral.'' I 
have heard that t/je Editor of " The Literary Heavens'' 
unbending and descending from his stool for a vacation, 
appointed a worthy man to his seat while he went fishing. 
The substitute having soon a book to review, and finding a 
place therein about which he was in some doubt, and 
being new to the craft and not yet rich in its manners, 
ingenuously confessed his uncertainty, saying that the 
matter appeared to him so and so, but yet he had some 
hesitation and would not be understood to speak too 
assuredly. T/jis article, of uncommon and unwelcome 
fiavor, coming to the clnef in lois skiff, he lost all taste for 
fishing for tJjat day, and on his return expressed his wrath 
to his substitute thus: " Sir, if ever again I leave you in 
charge of this paper, you will please remember that, how- 
ever ignorant you may be as an individual, as Editor of 



' The Literary Heavens ' you know everything." For my 
book itself, these omniscient folk, that foot Olympus 
jauntily, may have their will of it with small concern to 
me. It is not such writing as they are used to, and I 
should not expect the barnyard of the present time to have 
fowl in it that like aught but their accustomed mash. 
Flint corn is out of date. ' Tis too much for the crops of 
our critic-fowl of present henneries. zAnd even if they 
were pleased with me, why should I reck of that} It were 
foolish, inconsistent, insincere, to value praise where I am 
indifferent to blame. It is not unseldom a sadness to be- 
come the fashion. If humbly and earnestly any one hath 
aimed purely at a pure simplicity, belike he may be driven 
sometimes to repeat an old poefs words, '' It is as great a 
§pite to be praised in the wrong place and by a wrong 
person as can be done to a noble nature." 

Wherefore for the book itself 1 take no thought; but I 
would not have these busy-bodies, these Parnassian 
fringes, feast around my confidences; and if one of these 
§pecial volumes, not for sale nor in any manner offered 
to them, shall fall under a critic's observation, he will be 
overweening if he complain of what never was intended 
for his acquaintance and has no pretension to invite or 
entertain him. Let the critic- steeds (if you will permit 
me another figure) paw the ring and prance and arch their 
necks around my book itself — as they will, if possibly 
they become aware of me at all, seeing a way by being 
aware of me to make others aware of them and know 
what smart things they can neigh and what snorts let fly 



4 

from fiery nostrils. But if they busy themselves with the 
notes ^ or with this letter, which are fot you alone, beloved 
friends, they will be no better than cart-hacks that have 
broken a fence to forage in a garden, though the fence by 
its presence hath said plainly, "Cart-hacks, keep out^ 

These things I say not because I demise the science of 
Criticism. To contemn a fine and excellent branch of 
learning because of pretenders who tramp noisily in the 
borders of it, were as foolish and pinched-up with vanity 
replacing thought, as these gossips are. Ihere be critics 
{a few, — even belike more rare than poets, for what reason 
I know not) who are noble expounders of still nobler 
works. But these are men of thought. The critics 
whose loud bu{{ and small poison I would escape, are 
like ''inset^ miseries" which have no real dire^ion, but 
alight anywhere as it may happen. I will offer an exam- 
ple, the first at hand. In a critical article on the biog- 
raphy of Tennyson by bis son, I find it said: 

''He [Tennyson'] was in the habit of reading his 
poems aloud, beautifully and impressively, and also of 
'explaining' them. Now, we are of those who hold that 
to 'explain' a poem to one who does not instin&vely 
understand it, is like explaining a rose to a person devoid 
of sight or smell— a useless and perfunctory effort." 

O monstrum horrendum ! Res illotis manibus oblata. 
/ rather would meet a senseless brute, though fierce, than 
this human folly, to offer me somewhat with no prepara- 
tion, no real thinking thereon, — a jaunty toss to my table 
of a raw bit which serves no better for mental diet than 



in any other cookery, the author holding himself above 
the office of cook meanwhile, but serving me all the same 
his uncomposed mess. IVith what a superior smile doth 
he launch himself! With what a fine pity for the less 
exalted! But who is this fellow, I would say, that is so 
pleased with himself against a masters enjoyment in dis- 
coursing of the meanings which he hath compared in the 
compressions of verse or clothed in '' the purple and fine 
linen ' ' of poetic forms ? Thus he proceeds : 

''Imagine Robert Browning sitting down to explain 
himself. eApart from the inherent impossibilities of the 
task, his sense of the humorous would interdict it." 

Methinks Browning would have done naught very 
humorous if he had vouchsafed a note here and there at 
some length. 'But our critic's tipped chin, that is humor- 
ous in the double sense thereof. Hath his Sir- Oracle 
Criticship ever pondered over "The j^ncient Mariner," 
or " Childe Roland," or Sonnets of j^ngelo? Hath he 
met the questions that hang about Macbeth or Hamlet or 
Faust? Hath he known Grove's book on "The Nine 
Symphonies of Beethoven," or the multiple hosts of like 
expounders of great works of art ? Or doth he conceive 
a bare philosophy is to be reasoned and explained, but a 
noble art- work hath no like thought- deep? Is he ignorant 
that IDante disdained not to explain bis own Sonnets ? 
Or that Tasso is said to have "admired Casa so much 
as to devote a whole lecture to a single one of bis Sonnets, 
— no unusual honor paid by poets in those days to Son- 
nets, but seldom by such a poet as the author of the 
'Jerusalem Delivered '?" 



6 

Who is this critic, I would say, that he should prate 
so glibly and smile so highly in this matter, or touch with 
such lily-fingers what these masters have handled with so 
strong a grip ? He reminds me of a silly lady, much 
given to Hegel clubs and the like, who on observing a fme 
posie of flowers on my mantel shelf, stood halfway of the 
room and said, with a superior ecstacy, ''Ah! when I 
behold such exquisite blossoms, I feel it is a desecration to 
smell of them!" But the case would not be so bad for 
our voluble critic if he had taken thought enough to hold 
to his thought; for even if a navigator anchor to a wrong 
coast, he will show some quality if he anchor well. But 
in the same number of the critical journal I flnd it writ- 
ten concerning a certain verse of Shelley that ''the very 
irregularity of it is intended to provoke in the reader a 
vivid sense of the richness and fullness of the skylark* s 
song,*' and it is remarked further that a certain writer on 
verse better "might have directed his attention to the 
^lendid effects produced by the masters of verse through 
even slight departures from the basal rhythm,'' and in 
another number I find an account with much praise of a 
book on a great poem, saying that the book "is an excel- 
lent piece of interpretative and critical work," and that 
" it is, perhaps, to be regretted that the space devoted to 
the beauty of the lyrical outbursts is not greater.'' M 
times, then, our critic, when it happens so to befall in the 
irregular skip of his fancy, finds something more than a 
droop of the eyelid to bestow on the notion of explaining 
a poem. 



Now, I have some things to say to you about this book 
itself, as fully and freely — indeed, more without reserve 
than ever hitherto, became the pen hath a veil for me 
which talk Jmth not — as if we were sitting together, as 
some of us have done so often, so long and so happily, 
around the long table, studying of poetic truth. For what 
these airy fowl, the critics, these sun- eyeing eaglets, these 
all-knowing Olympians, these semi- deities, and demi- 
semi deities, and hemi-demi-semi deities, may think or 
say of me, or whether they say aught of me, is lighter to me 
than thistledown ; but what you, my near-heart many- 
few, may think and wish of me and tell to me, hie labor, 
hoc opus est to my soul. [Vherefore, if you shall learn 
that some of these masters have set upon me valiantly and 
said fierce things, be not troubled, I pray you; for even if 
I shall know of them, it will be but as a wet day which I 
note without heeding; but it is ten to one I shall not know, 
for I never yet hunted in papers and magazines to dis- 
cover what these notables said of me in my humble ten 
books, or whether they said aught; and now I am less 
like than ever to do so, since I rest me in you, my friends, 
who are my domicile, my senate, my great world. 

In this book all is simple Nature. First, as to sub- 
stance it is so. I have sought for nothing, nor cast about 
for occasions or themes or thoughts ''conjured up to serve 
occasions of poetic pomp,'' but duly and obediently have 
written what hath been granted me, in puris naturalibus, 
and every song of them had its one sudden origin and 
bath the same continuing purpose. 'Belike you might 



8 

think, because there he just one hundred and fifty of 
these songs, the major of them, that I staked out in 
advance just such a parterre, and said, " Go to, now I 
I will write one hundred and fifty Sonnets." But I 
counted them not, nor ever knew their number, tmtil I 
sent the last few of them to press, when, having written 
till the light failed me, and having then thrown away some 
three or four, to I there were just one hundred and fifty in 
all. There is no arrangement of the Sonnets. They were 
taken mainly in whatever order happened, as they were 
finished, or at least escaped further dependence on me, 
and became ready, or, howsoever, set forth. Perhaps 
some may say the book is far too private, so many of the 
songs being for you and of you; but this will be an 
obje^ion which we shall not heed. For you will not he 
di^leased to meet each other in this way. There is 
enough for the public if they care for any ; and if there 
be more for my friends, I am happy so. 

But, secondly, this book is as simple 0\(ature in style 
as in matter. Here is no straining and twisting of 
expression, no contortions of words, no manner of hot 
writing. I am tempted to say, as Ben Jonson in his 
''T)iscoveries," that in poesy ''now nothing is good that 
is natural. Right and natural language seems to have 
least of wit in it. That which is writhed and tortured, 
is counted the more exquisite. Cloth of Bodkin, or Tis- 
sue, must be embroidered, as if no face were fair that were 
not powdered or painted. No beauty to be had but in 
wresting and writhing our own tongue. * * * * 



There can not he one color of the mind, another of the 
wit. If the mind he staid, grave and composed, the wit 
is so; that vitiated, the other is blown and deflowered. 
* "" * So that we may conclude — M^heresoever man- 
ners and fashion are corrupted, language is. It imitates 
the public riot. The excess of feasts and apparel are the 
notes of a sick State; and the wantonness of language of 
a sick mind." If "rare Ben" so complain, and seem to 
forecast much that vapors among us, belike we must 
think the evil a chronic plague, afftidting all ages; which 
may make us more patient with the form of sickness now 
prevailing. Yet surely not the less, hut the more, should 
we give heed to our own health of taste, that it suffer not, 
and we should hear our witness. Wherefore I will 
say, — Whatever poets of the present time write such 
lines as 

"The deep, divine, dark day-shine of the sea," 

let them have their will of them, and their readers their 
fill of them; but, gentle friends, you will find here no 
such Simian things (/ mean big antics of body with small 
intelligence — sound being the body of verse), nor such a 
heaping up of syllables to the senses similar, but unagree- 
ing in thought, as if immoderate mass were shape and 
vehemence music, — not these, but only the natural,unfe- 
vered melodies that the brooks fiow withal, and the winds, 
even at their wildest, blow withal. 

This being so, methinks life is ordained for me as 
much as anything in Nature. Never yet was a poet 
killed by these potent errants, the critics, — not bodily 



10 

killed, and still more not his hook. * Tis said Keats died 
of the bullying of some of them; hut I never could credit 
it, for I could not think so admirable a poet such a ninny. 
The poets live, and if they be poetical to the full measure 
and favor of it, they will he joyful past attending to dis- 
praise or even knowing it, and past increase by praise, 
except by the delight of their friends beloved, for whom 
they sing with a devoutness. So says "Browning merrily, 
yet with piety — 

" Mine's a freehold, by grace of the grand Lord 
Who lets out the ground here, my landlord ; 
To him I pay quit-rent, devotion ; 
Nor hence shall I budge, I've a notion, 
Nay, here shall my whistling and singing 
Set all his street's echoes a-ringing 
Long after the last of your number 
Has ceased my front court to encumber." 

^nd again he says that he writes 

" Stuff you should stow away, ensconce 

In the deep and dark, to be found fast fixed 
At the century's close : such time strength spends 
A-sweetening for my friends." 

And 'tis with like meaning that of his lift-up of his 
readers and their return to a valley -rest afterward, he 
says, 

" Shall not my friends go feast again on sward, 
Though cognizant of country in the clouds 
Higher than wistful eagle's horny eye 
Ever unclosed for?" 



// 

Such is his faith or foreseeing ; and so will it be with 
him righteous Ij^, when equally the big "Dogberrys who only 
scoff at him and the Man- Friday worshipers who fall 
prostrate to him have gotten themselves once for all into 
their little bed-places. i/Jnd so hath it been with other 
poets, a lovely host of them, who still sing audibly and 
welcomedly above the thick throats of the critics, like 
either jays or larks — what matter? so they be natural and 
in place — or the calls of milkmen and the quaint cries of 
fish-venders and fruit-sellers, and all "the melodies of 
morn," suitable in V^ature's day, however the morn- 
fuddled from the night-revel growl. So triumph the 
songs of real singers; and so methinks your praise, as 
Cowper says, will ''prober even mine," being approba- 
tion by laws divine and natural. If so, well; and if 
not, still well; for I have no quarrel with whatever may 
be when the minister Time shall have done the will of the 
King. 

Now, of the Sonnet — that form of all forms, that 
moonstone of song, that crystal of opaline facets — / have 
somewhat to say to you: and this because it is so sadly 
misconceived and monstrously unknown by many of the 
critic gentry who talk of it glibly. Chiefly, to the great 
displeasure of any one who hath understood and loved 
the Sonnet, these quick folk are given to calling it artifi- 
cial. ''zA highly artificial form," they say, and other 
such like expressions, meaning that the Sonnet is a sheer 
invention, a bit of ingenuity and mechanism wherein 
some cunning designer hath di^layed himself. Now, I 



12 

will urge to you, what some of you know very well by 
long and lovely studies with me, that this precious gem of 
form is not artificial, nor was made up and patched 
together wilfully by any one, but is a piece of Nature and 
belongs in her kingdoms as much as any crystal or any 
living being of plants or animals. We may imagine a 
polyp {and therein I take nothing too senseless to figure the 
confident boldness of these guessing critics) surveying a 
human face and discoursing critic-wise thus: "Was 
ever a more artificial thing than this unsimple and much- 
made-up countenance? Behold what a thing it is, of 
many diverse parts and multiple appendages, far from the 
simplicity of my features. Obseroe the forehead fringed 
with a very different manner of substance, the hair; and 
hanging out underneath to balance it a sharp protuber- 
ance, the chin, with again hair pendant, to balance the hair 
of the top; and- midway a sharp ridge set lengthwise per- 
pendicularly, called a nose; and below it an opening, set 
lengthwise horizontally, called a mouth; and above the 
nose two holes with lids, entering straight inward, called 
eyes, highly colored with hues unlike anything else in the 
whole, even unto milk-white and blue and green and 
green- gray and blue-gray; and at the lower end of the 
nose two holes entering perpendicularly, without lids, 
called nostrils; and on each side a big fleshy bulge, exactly 
balancing, called cheeks; and behind these, two thin and 
most curiously wrought flag-like parts hung out, called 
ears, which again have holes in them that enter neither 
like the eye-holes nor like the nose-holes, but in a third 



13 

direction transverse to both the others. Tlainly some bold 
contriver JjatJj patched up an artificial complexity herein. 
Nature is dire^ and simple, as you behold it in me, the 
polyp, that have no such assemblage of unlike parts ." — 
Yet to suppose a polyp to discourse t/jus is to clash reason 
with reason and put thought against thought by conceiving 
a creature endowed with reason to deliver himself unreas- 
oningly, even unto the folly of thinking artificial what is 
the very top of Nature. Yet this were little worse than 
our critics do, when they look blind-worm-wise from 
below at that fiowering- tree-top of form, the Sonnet, and 
call it artificial. They take one glance, and if they 
observe something much unlike tJjemselves and apart from 
what before they have seen, they study it not humbly and 
closely, but bravely dub it artificial. They found not 
deeply nor work by Nature's true relationships, but piece 
things together like tiles, to dance over them. They skill 
not nor conceive to match them by harmonies of colors or 
agreements of substance, but patch them one to another in 
any manner, however tijey be discordant or corrode and 
crumble one another, so only they make smooth surface for 
the fantastic toe of their mental motion. For example, 
thus spake one of them to me scornfully of the Sonnet : 
' ' Fourteen lines I IV hy not sixteen ? Or twelve or ten ? ' ' 
''My gentle joy," go browse I May a juicy tJjistle befall 
thee I ^ut do thou, dear friend, who treadest reverently 
in D^ature's borders, let me show, lest never thou may 
have thought of it by a happy fall of thy attention to it, 
why there is a form — as well called Sonnet as by any other 



14 

name — which is a bloom of Nature as much in Us si{e as 
in its shape, and could not he sixteen lines, nor more nor 
less than just fourteen ''but in the estimation of a hair." 

Suppose some one noble thought present itself, in a 
kind of naked completeness, unclad with other thoughts, 
standing forth for the moment suddenly alone. Surely 
there is naught artificial in that, but it is highly natural, 
and what certainly will happen to a mind that so long and 
so faithfully hath known a thought in its logical garments 
and among its relations, that he is given intimacy to see it 
alone and, as it were, in the nude ^lendor of it. Given 
some such one noble thought, it will require a form of 
utterance of it, not too long to compress the thought finely, 
which is to say, to show it in its own sun-bath, and not 
too short to do it justice richly, which is to say {pursuant 
of my figure of speech), to stretch it in the whole fine 
stature of it in the free modesty of [h(ature. Now, to 
serve this requirement of a form for the utterance of one 
noble thought Imth grown up the Sonnet. It has taken 
two forms, called the Italian and the English. These 
proceed by different laws, but each is a natural bloom. 
Let us attend first to the Italian. 

The points of structttre of the Italian Sonnet are as 
follows : 

1. The length of the line. 

2. The movement of the line. 
J. The number of lines. 

4. The order of the rhymes. 

5. Certain internal laws involved in the order of the 
rhymes and in the length of the whole. 



^5 

Let me speak of each of these in the order of them, but 
{for it is not my purpose to write an essay on the Sonnet) 
as briefly, and even technically, as my aim will admit. 
The aim is to show that the Sonnet is a piece of U\[ature 
and not an artifice. 

Of the Length of the Line. The line is the English 
heroic; that is, a line of five measures in triple time, each 
measure having three beats with accent on the first, and 
typically arranged in one long syllable and one short, 
occupying respectively the time of two beats and one beat; 
and the line begins typically with the last beat of a 
measure. For example, the concluding line of {Milton's 
famous Sonnet on his blindness, which is typical. — 

/ 1 J / ij ; ij ; ij / 1 J 

They al - so serve who on - ly stand and wait. 

The heroic line obviously has ten syllables typically. 
The choice of this line for the heroic metre is neither acci- 
dent nor invention, but a matter of Nature, and as 
pertinent to us as to enjoy the green color of the foliage. 
Therefore it has been approved by all English poets from 
Chaucer to this time, and ail the greatest poems have been 
written in it. It is, and admirably, of just the right 
length, being not too long for a noble compa^ness (as any 
one may study by means of the six-measure line — the 
z/llexandrine — and the noble effect of the long-drawn 
tone, as it were, of that line, in Spenser's stan:(a, com- 
pared with what would be the tedium of that stan:(a if it 



i6 

were aU or mainly six-measured), and not too short for 
stateliness or for easy and free handling. On this latter 
point, namely, the freedom of the composer in its length, 
and the consequent grandeur of its scope. Prof. Sylvester 
in his ''Laws of Verse," peaking of ''Uryden's so 
strongly and repeatedly giving vent to his sense of free- 
dom and imshackledness when having ten syllables in a 
line to deal with instead of eight," says, ''To me the 
difference between the two seems like that between bathing 
in a pond or inland creek as compared with a plunge in 
the open sea; the very embarras de choix, the sense of 
infinite variety of combination and unlimited room for 
di^orting the imagination at will, has deterred me from 
more than timidly venturing upon thisfonfi of verse, as a 
miniature painter would naturally shrink from trying bis 
pencil on an historical canvas." I will not burden this 
page with Prof. Sylvester's mathematics of the freedom of 
the five-measured as compared with the four-measured 
line, by which he shows "the facility to be as 120 to 24, 
i. e., as ^ to I." Suffice it that the heroic line fits to our 
mental being maroelously, and hath a place in Nature as 
much as the human intelligence thai so can try wings in 
it. Moreover, to this virtue of dimension must be added 
that of having an odd number of measures, and thereby 
an exact middle measure, which fact greatly enriches its 
scope and variety in fine phrasings, pauses, symmetries, 
balancings ; and this virtue extends into the phrasings 
and balancings of the syllables as sounds no less than as 
significants. 



n 

Of the Movement of the Line : One point under 
this bead I have mentioned jmt above, namely, the finely 
variable motion of the heroic line in phrasiiigs and pauses. 
This I will not expand, though it is wortljy of large treat- 
ment, hut add only that the typical motion of the line, 
namely, a long following a short, {called iambic as dis- 
tinguished from trochaic) instead of the reverse way, hath 
a virtue and effect of its own which is plain in fa£t 
and a mystery in being. For it is not explicable how the 
ear and the rythmic sense of tJje mind so should take hold 
of a melody as that the movement of it throughout should 
bang on its beginning with the long or the short. Yet so 
it is; and poets have counted beautiful, which is tlje same 
as to say natural, the beginning of the heroic line with the 
short. Moreover, the triple measure, which makes this 
movement possible, is germane to the English, whose 
syllables and words so are framed in triple counts that the 
whole language is a scanning in that manner. Where- 
fore the motion of the heroic line is no invention unless 
English itself be an artifice instead of a growth of Nature; 
and indeed this triple time arrives from the very dawn of 
articulation and is to be found in the most primitive 
tongues, being as natural to our vocality as breathing. 

Here then we have the primary element of the Sonnet, 
its line and tJje motion of it, not artificial in any manner, 
but simply a gift to us of Nature, a gift as unfathomable 
and all- connected as all U\[ature's bestowments. 

Of the Number of Lines: That the lines count 
fourteen, and can be no more and no less, arises from 



i8 

the very principle and stru^ure of this gem of form. Its 
centrality and radiation may he set forth thus : 



I. 



Setting forth. 



The Ascent. ) 2. Developnnent up to the 
One J I Turn. 

Thought.] ^^ , 3_ The Turn, or Transition 



The Conclusion. 



to Finale. 
4. Finale. 



To extend this diagram into words: The Sonnet is 
made of One Thought, presented in two general divisions, 
namely, the Ascent of the Thought and the Conclusion, 
these two proceeding by four parts, namely, the Setting 
forth, or Statement, of the Thought, then the Develop- 
ment of it up to the Turn, then the Turn, or Transition 
to, or Preparation for, the Finale, and lastly the Finale or 
Completion. Now, this stru^ure or motion is wholly 
natural, not an artifice or invention, but a process of 
nature; and the length of the Sonnet is determined by it 
rigorously. For as the Sonnet must have but One 
Thought, of necessity it must he either diffuse, which 
never is beauty, or sternly compressed, compared, firm, 
which is dignity always and may be great beauty, even 
unto a grandeur. Now, in all composition that runs in 
time and sequence, it is a principle that the concluding 
division must be the shortest. ' Tis no matter how many 
or how long or how varied divisions there may be, the last 
must be more brief than any other of equal generality and 



'9 

import. If it be asked why tbis is so, I have not inquired 
wJjether there be an answer in some psychology, ^iit if 
there be none, 'tis no matter. Enough to say that so it is 
observed, and a certain brevity of conclusion is found to 
affect us pleasantly and leave the whole work with a 
happy symmetry in the mind. Now, if by this principle 
we examine the conclusion of the Sonnet, we shall see 
that being in six lines {the Sestet), having three lines for 
each of its two parts (the Tercets), it is just as it must be. 
For suppose it be four lines; then there must be either 
only one rhyme, which would be bad, or two, which then 
either must be couplets — again bad, not to be admitted in 
a Sonnet — or a quatrain alternately rhymed, which then 
bath no marks or natural boundaries as a two- structured 
conclusion. If five lines, or seven, then would be frus- 
trated the fine and simple symmetry of rhyme which is so 
great a beauty in the two tercets. If eight lines, then they 
must be either in quatrains alternately rhymed, or in 
couplets, or have at least one couplet, which is bad, or be 
irregularly rhymed, which also were a sacrifice of a bvely 
balance. Besides, if so many as either seven or eight 
lines, then as the first part, the zA scent, must be impres- 
sively longer, and as impressiveness will require greater 
difference in length the longer the last part, there would 
be need of eleven or twelve lines at least in the Ascent, 
making the whole form eighteen or twenty lines long; 
and thereupon the fine intense brevity, suitable for one 
strong or gracious thought, hath disappeared, and also 
the swiftness of the conclusion — which are virtues of the 



20 

Sonnet. But six lines in the conclusion give just the 
right values and effects; of rhyme, because then there may 
be three rhymes — the best form — or two, without the 
obtrusion of a couplet ; and of length, because it is swift, 
yet hath space enough; and with tljis length an advantage 
of two lines in the Ascent gives enough pre-eminence and 
weigJjt therein. So then the whole is short enough for one 
thought compacted, and yet large enough to carry the 
thought, being a form with the force of two quatrains for 
developing the thougJjt, and two tercets for its conclusion 
and binding up. 

Of the order of the rhymes : That there shall he 
rhyme in the Sonnet, follows naturally both from its si^e 
and its richness. For the si^e of the form requires the 
support of sound, and the riclmess of it is tJje availing 
itself of the finest qualities and resources natural in 
syllables. Tijere be some persons, and even some called 
critics, who ^eali slightingly of tljat fine reminiscence of 
the ear named rhyme. But as well might they obje^ to 
the harmonies and repetitions of tones in music as to the 
like in syllables, which are tones, in some points unlike, 
but in some excelling, tJje quality of music-tones. And 
it is naught that in rhyme the harmonies are sequences, 
instead of being struck at one moment as in music; for 
in music too ttje progression of chords hath an element 
and value akin to rtoyme, and in verse the detention of 
tone, winch is a happy power of the ear, is like that 
temporary persistence of a light in the eye, whereby a 
revolving ^ark becomes not a moving point of gbw, but 



21 

a shining circle. ' Tis tme that rhyme, like many har- 
monies and progressions and good effects in music, may 
be used ill, and true also that sometimes 'tis to be omitted 
well, as in music there is place for passages in unison. 
But to object to rhyme in the whole, is such a flouting of 
wide and lovely ranges of qualities in syllables and the 
fine accord of the ear therewith, that I know not whetJoer 
denial of it be an affe^ation such as may be su^pe^ed in 
whoever vaunts superiority to any delight; or a dim folly 
akin to asceticism, a defamation of a certain sweetness 
and overflow of life and color, like Pascal's monstrous 
aversion to his sister's kissing her children; or a plain 
ignorance which hath caught at some pretense and echoes 
it around its windy caverns. Either way, I wiU take no 
notice of it, but accept gladly what I find nobly resonant, 
and §peak of its place and property in the Sonnet. As I 
write, my girls are singing rapturously close by me, now 
in two parts, now with one voice, now with two in 
unison, anon again in harmonies, in and out with spark- 
ling varieties and every quality of the virtue of tones. 
And shall I put some away, — like a cast of one hue over 
the prism, — or know not the like in syllables? O, away 
with your dull parsimonies ! I will be rich with the whole 
of Nature. 

The Sonnet is to be musical, fair with the sweet sound- 
values of syllables in all their means for beauty; therefore 
there will be some rhyme. But again it is to be marked 
by dignity, impressiveness, force, reserve, compression; 
therefore the rhymes will be few, comporting with the 



22 

strong and severe simpleness of manner in the Sonnet, 
and affecting the ear in exactly right proportion, not 
obtruding past their due office in that verse. Therefore, 
also, as rhyme is not to be omitted, being a force of beauty, 
and yet not to be multiplied in kinds, there must be repe- 
tition of the few rhymes; and the repeating of them must 
be in such way as to preserve the fine monotone and yet 
not cause the ringing or jingling of one vowel. Again, 
the placing of the rhymes must have a regularity, for this 
is form and dignity, and moreover hath a possibility of 
use with a purpose and power inhering in that form. 
Now, these natural conditions are obtained in the Sonnet 
by the prevailing of only two rhymes in the whole Octave, 
and these so disposed in the quatrains (inside and outside 
rhymes) as to attain the greatest dignity by remote echoes 
which delight the memory-power of the ear and require the 
full virtues of its attention and perception. Hence, also, 
the rule that these rhymes so are to be treated in the perfect 
Sonnet as not to come to a concluding couplet anywhere. 
And now coming to the Sestet, in the first Tercet of which 
occurs the Turn of the Thought to the Conclusion, it is 
proper, and indeed we rightly may say inevitable, that 
this Turn of the Thought should be marked by new 
quality and order in the rhyme. It is so; and here again, 
as in the Octave, the principle of a certain remoteness of 
echo obtains and gives a charming music with also a 
lovely dignity; for in the best form of the Sonnet, most 
loved and written by the greatest masters, there are three 
rhymes in the Sestet, the latter Tercet rhyming with the first 



23 

one line by line, so that each line- end bath its mate in an 
echo three lines away — a very beautiful sound-order 
whose equal charm and soberness to the ear are very 
notable. Yet, though this be the finest, 'tis held by all 
poets that there are others which are suitable, and hence 
there is a liberty of choice in the Sestet, while the form of 
the Octave must be observed with tloe strict obedience due 
to its place, purpose and perfedtness. This liberty in the 
Sestet is another natural grace and virtue of the Sonnet; 
for it grants a variety at need, and this just where it 
should be, namely, in the conclusion, which thus may be 
brought to some §pecial agreement with some peculiar 
effect or purpose in the Octave. 

But now here I can not stop, in peaking of the 
rhymes, without recurring to the natural dimensions of 
the Sonnet; for the laws of the rhymes lead dire^y to the 
length of it. For why, it may be asked, should not the 
principle of odd numbers, that they afford the grace of 
symmetry, be applied to make quintrains rather than 
quatrains the steps of the Ascent of the Sonnet. The 
answer is in the law of the rhymes ; for these so are dis- 
posed as actually to effect in even lines the symmetry of 
odd lines and their balance on a center. For the two 
inside rtoymes, i. e. of the second and third lines of the 
quatrain, effect a central unity as of one line or portion, 
on each side whereof the outside rhymes cause the first 
and fourth lines to balance finely. Moreover, not only 
thus do the rhymes, so disposed, have effect like a balance 
of an odd number on the central digit in a beautiful 



24 

manner, but there is also in this way a perfect balance of 
the rhyming sounds themselves round a real, but invisible 
and inaudible, axis — on both sides thereof a perfect sym- 
metry, — which all would be done away in a quint rain. For 
in a quintrain there must be either a greater weight of some 
rJjy me- sound, or else one line nnrhymed. Wherefore all 
poets have leaned to the quatrain form, showing a general 
ear for it and natural approval. As the rhymes thus lead 
to the quatrain by these admirable balances, and bind 
thus the quatrain into a unity, so also do they lead to the 
Tercets. For as there is a turn of purpose or fun^ion at 
that point in the Sonnet, so it is suitable and natural, as 
I have said, indeed, inevitable, that the point should be 
marked by a change of rhyme. Now this change may be 
either in the sounds or in the succession, and the largest 
effect and richest contrast will concur with both changes 
at once. This is accomplished in the Tercets. For in t/je 
finest and most valued form of Sestet, as above described, 
there is a total change of rhyme-sound, and an equaliy 
notable change in the number of the rhymes, and these are 
di^osed in a succession whose contrast with the quatrains 
is as extreme as can be, nor is there any other form beside 
the Sestet of two Tercets in which the contrast of arrange- 
ment of sounds against t/je Octave of two quatrains 
could be so great. Yet this contrast in the rhymes and in 
the order of them is marked with the same dignity, the 
same balance on an aerial axis, and the same delicate 
remoteness of echo, that are charms in the O^ave 
rhymes. 



25 

You will observe in the foregoing that I have not 
known from what trait to treat the Sonnet first, whether 
from the rhyme or from the length; for I was compelled 
to refer to the rhymes in treating of the length, and again 
to the length in speaking of the rhymes. For the length 
so depends on the rhymes, and again the rhymes on the 
length, that they are mutually involved and inseparable. 
'But let any one contemplate these elements together — if 
this account of the Sonnet be reasonable — then how vain 
and ignorant will it seem to call that generous and fine 
form artificial I For plainly up out of the properties of 
time, rhythm and sound in §peech the Sonnet hath grown 
as naturally as afiowering tree out of the earth. 

If now it be asked — Why and how are all these effe^s 
done on us? Why like we the finale to be shorter than 
foregoing parts? Why enjoy we the symmetry of balances 
on a dividing line? Why have we so much pleasure in 
the line of five measures? Why delight we in a triple 
time in Speech? Why are we charmed with recurrent 
phrasings? Why do rhythmic pauses enchant us? Why 
doth the beginning with unaccented beat move ns through- 
out the line magically? Why hath the quatrain so great 
echo in us? Why is likeness of tones so rich a food to 
our ears? Why have sequences of sounds, progressions 
of vowels and echoes of consonants, such mysterious 
attra^ions ? Why are some sequences light, trifiing, and 
some dignified, noble? Why is a change of sound with 
change of thought excellent ? — // we ask these questions, I 
cannot answer. As I have said, 'tis simply observable 



26 

and perceptible that these things are so. And why is the 
grass green instead of red? And why are we charmed 
with it? And why are the heavens like crimson seas at 
sunrise or sunset ? And why is it glorious to us ? Why 
are some smells delicious and some noxious to us? 
And why are some two or several tones together harmo- 
nious and sweet to us, and some others discordant and 
jarring? For it is observable that some creatures delight 
in odors which to us are vexatious. zAnd any creature is 
pleased with noises or cries made by itself, how strident or 
discordant soever to other ears. Why are these things so ? 
We cannot tell. O^or can we follow anything beyond a 
question or two without coming to the unquestionable and 
unanswering. IVe have to take these things as har- 
monies divine and natural, and our love of them as being 
our blessed oneness with them in "the One in the 
Many." 

To those of you, beloved friends for whom I write, who 
have sat with me around the long table these many years, 
the above discourse will be but the condensing of many 
and long and happy expansions and discussions; and to 
others, though I acknowledge it too brief and needing 
unfoldment at different points, yet I pray you forgive this, 
as it seemed the better way, and consider that it hath this 
advantage, namely, that whoever will unfold the whole for 
themselves by applying it to many different Sonnets and 
working it out in them, will attain a far better apprehen- 
sion of the Sonnet-form as a growth of U^ature than 
could be conveyed to them by any expansions done for 
them in these limits, perhaps in any limits. 



27 

Of the English Sonnet : The English Sonnet con- 
sists of three quatrains, each alternately rhymed, and a 
concluding couplet. It is very much simpler in structure 
and laws than the Italian, hut equally is remote from 
invention, being truly a natural produ^ and an organ- 
ism. c/JU that in the foregoing has been said about the 
quatrain, applies to the same of course as an element or 
formal part in the English Sonnet-form, and need not be 
repeated here. c/HI- that has been said touching the Son- 
net as a vehicle for one worthy thought and for a strong 
comparing of that thought into a tense expression, fits to 
the English form as well as to the Italian. Likewise suits 
equally what has been said of the line of five measitres. 
In these points the Italian and the English agree, and 
equally are growths of Nature, not artifices of men. The 
traits wherein the English form differs from the Italian, 
are three, namely, the law of the rhymes, the threefold 
development, and the peculiar conclusion by a couplet. 
Touching the rhymes, the English Sonnet hath the utmost 
possible variety of sweet musical eclooes, attained by alter- 
nate rhyming in the quatrains {a highly natural and 
inevitable manner as old as rhyme itself), and not only by 
rhymes contrasted well in one quatrain, but by quatrains 
richly varied and contrasting in rhyme with each other, 
and by the concluding couplet. The couplet again should 
rhyme with sounds diverse from any in the endings of the 
quatrain lines. This is the typical and most resourceful 
manner of the rhymes if handled masterfully; but it is 
varied much and with sundry lovely effeks of monotones 



28 

or combinations, by poets who can finger aU the keys and 
stops of t/je organ of their art. 

Tlje concluding couplet fulfiUs the law that fide finale 
must be the shortest of the integral parls, but in a very 
peculiar and striliing manner. In the perfect English 
Sonnet, the couplet is an epigram, re-uttering the sub- 
stance, or the one tJjougJjt, of tlje Sonnet, or at least a 
condensed and manifest consequence or issue of it, in a 
swift, sententious, penetrating style, having tlje inevitable 
eloquence of a sufficient thought pressed into small space, 
and thus binding together and clasping as with a golden 
hand all the argument and imagery of the Sonnet. <tAnd 
no English Sonnet is a masterful or satisfying example 
of this form if it fail in the power and office of tlje 
couplet. 

Here then, so far, we have the English form as one 
thought in three quatrains richly varied in contrasting 
harmonies, and finally encircled and compressed together 
by the band of an epigram uttered with a new harmony 
and with a tense force. All this I conceive to be a most 
natural and uninvented thing, discovered and found in 
U^ature, but not devised. All the elements thereof, but 
the ending couplet, have been treated hereinbefore as 
Nature s express gifts to us, mysterious in their fitness to 
u^ as all her gifts are; and as to the couplet, 'tis but the 
law of the finale appearing in a peculiar produ3, which 
is a sudden bloom of the Sonnet's substance into an 
epigram. And what more natural or inevitable or 
according to many examples in living organisms than 



29 

that an orderly determination and growth of some length 
should sJjoot suddenly into a flower or otJjer conclusive 
form? 

[P{dw as to the tijree quatrains, Ijere again tJje whole 
movement is Nature's own. The effe^ of odd numbers, 
became tijey afford a satisfying balance and symmetry, 
again obtains herein. The English Sonnet is like a 
journey by three well- ordained stages, or lilie three firm 
and equal strides in one movement between stations. 
The one thought is treated three-fold, which is tlje way 
of Nature, being a beginning, middle, and end, a setting 
forth, a development, a conclusion. ' Tis true ttoe natural 
and effective proportions in such a progress of tljought 
make the middle part, or development, longer than the 
first part, or statement, and tlje conclusion the sJjortest of 
the three. But this natural and pleasureable architecture 
is replaced with another kind of beauty in the English 
Sonnet by tlje potency of the concluding couplet. For 
this, being a conclusion or finale, relieves the quatrains 
of the necessity of the proportions which tlje three- foldn ess 
of the thought must have if it were standing alone and 
included the finale. Hence the quatrains may offer, as 
they do, the chara^er quite peculiar to this form, namely, 
the unfolding of a thought in three equal rich quantities, 
which offend not but balance well because they all lean 
equally on a sufficient and embracing conclusion, the 
tense epigram of the couplet. V^ow, if thus the thought 
be to be spoken in three equal parts {each step being of 
equal moment and admitting of equal force and beauty), 



30 

and in a compressed tense form, as may befit the utter- 
ance of one fine and gracious thought, and if the strain 
fall naturally into the lovely quatrain, then what more 
or else can there be than three quatrains ? For three is 
the first odd number, and the only one before nine which 
admits of a balance of two extremes on an equal middle. 
Now nine quatrains would be too long, both for the com- 
pression of one thought, and for an embracing conclusion 
in a couplet. Wherefore again, in the English form as in 
the Italian, fourteen lines is the inevitable number, nor 
can there be more nor less than just the fourteen to fulfill 
the conditions, namely, of one thought tensely compared, 
composed in three equal parts, with a finale finely com- 
pressed into a brief epigrammatic circuit. 

Thus in all these elements and characters just 
described, and their mutual inter-weaving and depend- 
ence in the Sonnet, I conceive the English form, as I 
have said, to be as inevitable and as much a pure bloom 
of Nature as the Italian. zAnd if it were not so, even 
Shakespeare s vast beauty and beaming verse could not 
have made the English Sonnet the sweet and living 
instrument it is. 

I may add that instead of developing the thought, by 
beginning, progress and ending, the English form simply 
may repeat it over and over, quatrain by quatrain, if it be 
done with fine variety and reinforcing richness of fancy 
mated to music; which is one reason why the three parts 
should he equal, and therefore, by all the other conditions, 
each one a quatrain. This may be observed in the 



3' 

glowing ingot of many a one of Shakespeare's Sonnets — 
for example the famous and beautiful CXVI, wherein the 
quatrains merely repeat one another — but with what rich 
variety and noble imagery I 

It hath been opined that the English form is marked 
more by sweetness, the Italian by strength and elevation. 
Perhaps there may be some truth in the view. Yet it is 
not to be pushed into exclusiveness. For the English may 
arise and gird itself mightily, and the Italian discover a 
voice like a dove. 

'Tis a remarkable power of the English Sonnet, by 
reason of the couplet, to hold the sense and pitrpose in 
suspense to the very last lines, and then suddenly illu- 
minate the whole and bind up all into a unity and fling 
back a force over it in a marvelous manner. For an 
example in point take the following very fine and all but 
perfect Sonnet of George Herbert; and note too, besides 
the point in question, the very beautiful phrasing, which 
is so pronounced as to add effect to the unpausing move- 
ment of the couplet lines, and yet is itself varied and the 
phrasings made to swing on hinges, as it were, by two 
unpausing lines in the Sonnet, they, as well as the 
couplet, recurring to the movement of the strong opening 
line : 

Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round ! 

Parents first season us : then schoolmasters 
Deliver us to laws ; they send us bound 
To rules of reason, holy messengers, 
Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin. 



32 

Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes, 
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, 
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises ; 
Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness. 
The sound of glory ringing in our ears ; 
Without, our shame ; within, our consciences ; 
Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears. 

Yet all these fences and their whole array 

One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away. 

The heauty of the following Sonnet of IVilliam 
Drummond moves me to insert it as another instance of 
suspense of meaning till the couplet lets it loose like a 
beam of light : 

As when it happeneth that some lovely town 
Unto a barbarous besieger falls, 
Who there by sword and flame himself installs. 
And, cruel, it in tears and blood doth drown ; 
Her beauty spoiled, her citizens made thralls, 
His spite yet so can not her all throw down 
But that some statue, arch, fane of renown 
Yet lurks unmaimed within her weeping walls : 
So, after all the spoil, disgrace and wreck, 
That time, the world and death could bring combined. 
Amidst that mass of ruins they did make 
Safe and all scarless yet remains my mind. 

From this so high transcending rapture springs. 

That I, all else defaced, not envy kings. 

' Tis a mistake often made {wherefore I recur here to 
an engaging principle which often we have discussed 
around the long table) to consider poetic laws as limita- 



33 

ttons — a bondage which, however necessary to some ends, 
the poet must strive with, setting free his meaning and no 
little of his beauty in ^ite of the rigid resistance of the 
form. On the contrary, the fine and admirable truth is 
that, if a poet have strong conscience for form, and a 
humble obedience to it, the form will lead the composer to 
beauties not his own, wondrously given to him, suddenly 
beaming on him, became he waits on Nature with a piety 
and seeks not his own way. Often have we proved this 
impressive and verily sacred thing by experiment. 
Around the long table frequently we have been concerned 
with some poem wherein the poet hath assumed too much 
of himself, and hath not been in any awe of the form, but 
lightly hath turned from it; and then when we have 
essayed to amend those places by a reverent obedience to 
the formal law, after a little patience and endeavor, we, 
even we, have been led to expression and to beauty which 
have been wonders to us, wherein we have agreed that 
they were great improvements and illuminations over the 
lines of the at-that-point negligent and unpious poet. 
This comes of the virtue of the form, that it is of Nature, 
and again this proves that virtue. For obedience would 
not lead surely to beauty if the form were a mere inven- 
tion or artifice; for no man can invent anything that will 
not apply as ill to one case as it fits well to another. For 
illustration I will venture to find fault with the foregoing 
beautiful Sonnet of Drummond, and to think that a sim- 
ple obedience to form will amend it, and with a gain of 
force remarkable in so slight changes. The Sonnet being 



34 

English in form, the prevalence of but two rhymes in the 
first two quatrains is an exception which may have an 
end and beauty of its own, and fit well with the monotone 
of the imagery; and the change therefrom at the third 
quatrain agrees with the marked change and advance of 
thought. But the breaking up of the alternating rhyming 
of the first two quatrains hath no meaning and no fitness 
that I can see; and if it be said that it suits well a picture 
of the confusion of a sacked town, it is to be answered 
that it interferes with the value of the prevailment of but 
two rhymes in the eight lines to convey the monotone of 
desolation, whereas this will be helped by the regular order 
and recurrence of the rhymes; and thus the ear is disap- 
pointed — with no reason which makes the disappointment 
a shaking of the mind, as it were, to apprehend better a 
pidture, but simply the ear is left confused or discontented. 
Witness now in the following how easily the poet might 
have obeyed the form, and say whether the obedience be 
not improvement ; and note therein that what is the fifth 
line in the original, the sixth in the proposed change, 
gains much in force hy transference from the passive to 
the a^ive: 

As when it happeneth that some lovely town 
Unto a barbarous besieger falls, 
Who, cruel, it in tears and blood doth drown, 
And there by sword and flame himself installs, 
His spite yet so can not her all throw down, 
Her beauty spoil, her citizens make thralls, 
But that some statue, arch, fane of renown 
Yet lurks unmaimed within her weeping walls. 



35 

zA much more impressive instance of loss by unobe- 
dience to form I will cite, without presuming to offer 
amendment, in SJjalie^eare' s Sonnet XXIX: 

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, 
I all alone beweep my outcast state 
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, 
And look upon myself, and curse my fate, 
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, 
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, 
With what I most enjoy contented least, 
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 
Haply 1 think on thee, — and then my state 
(Like to the lark at break of day arising 
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate ; 
For thy sweet love remember'd, such wealth brings. 
That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 

The rhymes in the first and third quatrains turn on 
the same vowels, and in part the same consonants too, 
and, what is worse, the same word that ends the second 
line of the first quatrain ends the second line of the third, 
and, to make this ungainliness still greater, the word 
reappears near the end of the couplet. These defeats are 
very unpleasant to the ear and ^read a thin veneer of 
poverty over a genuine rich substance. The Sonnet truly 
is beautiful in ^ite of these blemishes ; but the important 
reflexion is this — If Sbake^eare had paused over this 
composition enough, and with enough conscience, resolved 
that it should be shaped into obedience to pure form, it is 



36 

impossible to say to what cbara5tensiic splendid expres- 
sions the ''Star of Poets" might have been led, lifting 
this Sonnet to be a very wonder. 

After so much about the form, I will take leave to say 
a little about the substance of the Sonnet; for I think 
many Sonnets come to naught because it is attempted to 
put into them a substance unfit, as if one should essay to 
keep wine in a vessel cut from rock salt, whereas this 
would dissolve the vessel and ^oil the wine. The Sonnet 
is specially the vehicle of personal feeling and of thoughts 
thereto germane. This gives it a wide scope; for every 
manner of fancy, imagery, figure, allusion, beauty or 
nobility of di^ion, may come to the service of such 
thoughts. Even comic matter, a fine humor, a rich satire, 
a dainty ridicule, a roguish thrust, may shelter in the 
Sonnet. In illustration whereof it is delight to quote 
Austin Dobson's Sonnet of Don Quixote: 

"Behind thy pasteboard, on thy battered hack, 
Thy lean cheek striped with plaster to and fro, 
Thy long spear leveled at thy unseen foe. 
And doubtful Sancho trudging at thy back. 
Thou wert a figure strange enough, good lack! 
To make wiseacredom. both high and low, 
Rub purblind eyes, and, having watched thee go. 
Dispatch its Dogberrys upon thy track. 
Alas! poor Knight! Alas! poor soul possest! 
Yet would to-day, when courtesy grows chill, 
And life's fine royalties are turned to jest. 
Some fire of thine might burn within us still! 
Ah ! would but one might lay his lance in rest, 
And charge in earnest — were it but a mill. 



37 

I must own that to me this is one of the most ajfedting 
Sonnets it hath been my fortune to meet, and an exquisite 
example how close to humor lies pathos. And indeed a 
smile in a Sonnet is not a laughter, and the form hath by 
nature a sweet seriousness, even a solemnity. Sidney 
Lanier has said that whenever an English poet has had 
some fecial holy confidences to give the world, he has 
chosen the Sonnet for his form of verse and manner of 
conveyance. Now as this seriousness involves a befitting 
thought, capable of extreme compression, there are two 
kinds of substance which are not natural to the Sonnet, 
namely, narrative and description. For these exist in 
their details, and therefore must be either too meager for 
the worth of the Sonnet, or so rich as to exceed its limits. 
In either case we shall have an empty, indigent Sonnet, 
because either there is so little matter for it, or so little of 
so much can be gotten into it. Description may be ven- 
tured if it be successful in very broad treatment and 
sweeping outlines, and erected, as it were, like an arch- 
way or a vista for a sufficient thought, whose march through 
the description is the aim of the whole. Narrative may 
be admitted under the same rule; but it is more difficult 
of treatment and a dangerous adventure. And neither 
description nor narrative can be aught but failure when 
made the whole or main substance of a Sonnet. For 
example of this, touching narrative, I will insert here 
three Sonnets, which some of you have condemned; and 
indeed I must admit a lack of sufficiency in them. Yet 
they were not born of the narrative, but of the thoughts 



whereby the legends captivated me and still so hold me 
that I am fain to keep the Sonnets here, after removing 
them from the book, owning that they exhibit the dangers 
of narrative. One is a Parsee myth, as follows: 

When Yima journeyed to the fierce sun-sea, 
And plunged therein — so saith the Parsee script — 
And In the piling billows had been dipt, 
Forth with a necromantic strength came he. 
Then had he might to stretch the earth to be 
Larger one-third ; new pastures, bare and stript. 
And seas with their first loosened fury whipt. 
He clad and calmed, to flocks and fishes free. 
As far as Yima went to thee I go. 
What found he in that fiery tide of light 
More than in thy heart burneth me as white 
And strong, beloved? To such a striving might, 
I stretch the circuit of the heavens, the night 
And day, full sea and earth, and winds that blow. 

Another is a Buddhist story of the Buddha in the 
Bodisat state, that is, during one of his many lives while 
in transition unto the perfedt Buddha : 

They came to the Blessed Bodisat, declaring 
The water gone, the caravan panting athirst. 
" The good is always by," said he ; " dig first 
Just at your stand." So did they, and slowly baring 
In the soft earth a rock, they stopped, despairing 
Of what might be. " Deeper ! " •' The rock ! " " The worst 
And best is here. Strike ! " Then burst 
The water through the shivered flint unsparing. 
•' Ah," said the wise and good one, " in dry sand 



39 

Dig ye but deep, and at your very feet — 

As always so — lie benefits and veins. 

'Tis so the faithful with continuing hand 

Applies his fervors in the common street ; 

His own one lot, else none, heart's need contains." 

The third is the Grecian story of Tyrtceus : 

He was their fate, the Pythian priestess said, — 
A limping, crippled bard the war should lead ; 
And Spartan men whom Spartan mothers breed 
Refuse with lightsome scorn so to be led. 
"Sweet dwarf," they say, " Now take thy place at head, 
Yea, head and top of yonder hill ; we need 
A prattler's tongue to chant a pleasant meed 
Of praise to victors or heroic dead." 
Tyrtaeus sat, and saw the boasters fly, 
And all was rout : then raiseth such a song, 
Such martial music, that again they stand, 
Shaken to shake the foe wi' that battle-cry. 
Ha! 'tis the bard, the bard to whom belong 
Their victories — his song worth all their band! 

To this I will add a lyrical treatment of the same 
suhje^, which I wrote because unsatisfied with the Sonnet. 
Perhaps the two together may serve to prove, at least to 
indicate, that the song or ballad is a right vehicle of nar- 
rative, but the Sonnet unfit: 

TYRTytUS. 
Loud spake the warriors grim. 
With many a fleer and ban, 
And with a merry scorn — 



40 

"We will have none of him, 

A dwarf, a crooked span 

Of flesh ! Shall not be borne 

The Pythian maid appoint us such a man ! " 

Him on a hill they placed ; 

" Sit there, sweet manikin," 

They said, " and view the battle ; 

And when one line hath chased, 

The other fled, join in 

And sound thy gamesome prattle, 

To lead anon the fighting men that win ! " 

All day they fought, till rout 

Hung over dying din, 

And shameful night was near ; 

When from the hill a shout 

That shook their hearts within 

And clove them, rang out clear — 

To lead anon the fighting men that win, 

A song of war and men. 

In tones that stabbed like knives, 

Of old heroic story 

And mighty names, and then 

Of fires and babes and wives, 

Of honor and of glory. 

And truant shame the very heart that rives! 

They halt one throb, they pour 
Back to the front, like wave 
Half-stopped, then stronger ! 
They bleed, they win ! Then o'er 
His brow they bind the brave 



4' 

Bay wreath, jeering no longer 

The limping body that such music gave ! 

They wove a wicket of spears, 

Throned it with shields, arose 

And him bore home with song 

Whose song beat down their fears 

Till they beat down their foes : 

" It is ye bards are strong," 

They cried; "ye sing — the soul with valor glows!'* 

O gentle legend old, 

Ancient, but young in sooth, 

Gentle, though eke of strife ! 

'Tis he that sings doth hold 

The keys of love and truth 

And mysteries of life. 

Unlocking all the gates of strength and youth. 

On every hill there stands 

At need a singing bard, 

Who pours his song like rain ; 

And with it flush our hands. 

And easy grows the hard, 

And crags crumble to plain, 

And every murky patch of night is starred. 

O music, rhymes of thought — 

For thoughts have rhymes, — and sound, 

And spell of rhythmic times. 

Ye come from lips unsought. 

Or scorned ; then from the bound 

Of earth's collected climes 

Who dares, he hears, — then dareth the full round. 



42 

iAs illustration of thcmanner and treatment of nar- 
rative proper to a Sonnet, when it may be adventured at 
all, I will give the following fine Sonnet, which was sent 
anonymously to the long table. A certain character of 
thought and a forecast of the story as a symbol pervade 
the Sonnet from the first. Hence the success of the nar- 
rative in the Sonnet- form : 

THE ARTIST. 

An angel took his palette in his hand, 
On lonely shores, where never ship passed by. 
And seated on the brown, ribbed ocean sand, 
Painted a glorious sunset in the sky. 
In bold, swift, sweeping strokes the colors fell ; 
Among the black-robed clouds a wonder blazed, 
Radiance from Heaven and scarlet fires from Hell ; 
The winds forgot to move and stood amazed : 
And, when the flaming pageant slowly paled, 
The sea was darkened, and the vapors gray. 
The colors faded, and the beauty failed. 
And all was finished with the dying day, 

He cleaned his brushes, turned his head, and smiled 
On his sole critic — a poor fisher's child. 

// is notable in this beautiful Sonnet in the English 
form, that the couplet is not parted, stands not by itself, 
and is no more than the ending of a long descriptive and, 
if so I may say, vividly colored sentence; and yet it has 
an integrity of its own, so defined, indeed, that if found 
alone, without any preceding lines, almost it would be 
mtelligible, nay, I think, surely would conjure up a clear 



4^ 

picture before an imaginative mind; and it is of ample 
epigrammatic virtue to bind up the whole; and moreover 
the purpose of the whole Sonnet is withheld till the couplet 
declares it. It seems, although hut a part of a sentence, 
to have all the virtues and do all the offices of the couplet 
in the English form. 

PVith this, dear friends, farewell to my brief criticism 
of the Sonnet, a form so rich in resources, so flexible, so 
resolute, so harmonious, so severe, so chaste, so genial; 
only remarking that its brevity counts naught against its 
dignity. I admit that si:{e is an element of form, and yet 
an element with no standard, Brobdignagian or Lillipu- 
tian as comparison may be; and a form may be of the 
most noble without great si{e. I will quote an excellent 
illustrative paragraph from Lorado Taft: 

"Another most extraordinary exhibition of skill is to 
he found in a tiny group of bronze and ivory, by Riviere- 
Theodore, whose name is quite new to me. His little 
" Salammbo chez Matho" is not over afoot in height and 
yet has the qualities of the largest sculpture. Tloe work 
is one of the highest distinction, the modeling is perfect. 
We are not very familiar in America, I fancy, with 
Flaubert's story, but know that it is a tale of old-time 
Egypt, and that French art has of late years often had 
recourse to it for motifs. We know the Salammbo as a 
snake charmer, but that figure was trivial compared with 
this interpretation. The little Salammbo' s ivory face is 
intensely personal and real, her white bosom of exquisite 
form; her arms, also of ivory, are faultless in their 



44 

contour and individual to the finger tip. The passionate 
figure of the kneeling Matho seems to fairly quiver with 
emotion as he surprises her with his embrace, and cries: 
" Je t' aime! je t' aime ! " The wonderful perfedion of this 
jewel-like work is proven by the large photographs, which 
look as though taken from life-si^e figures, stoowing no 
defers nor clumsiness of execution. What a triumph 
it is when a man can make a little thing like this so 
great I" 

Of the Cameos. The Cameo is a little carving in 
words, a miniature. I have used it as a vehicle for one 
thought, rather I may say, for an exclamation, which took 
not to itself the large robes of the Sonnet. It is my own 
form; at leasts I know not that anyone hath used it 
before. Nevertheless, I affirm it to be no invention, no 
artificial thing, hut a conception, wherein quickly dropped 
and arranged themselves rhythms and harmonies and 
proportions perpetually met in [feature. "Because the 
Cameo is a carving in miniature, the line hath not the 
large dimensions of the five-measured, as in the Sonnet, 
but the much smaller circumscription of the four- 
measured. The form is tJjree-fold, agreeing with the 
natural three-foldness of a thought, even of an exclama- 
tion, as hereinbefore mentioned. The three parts are a 
tercet, all three lines having one rhyme-sound; a quatrain 
with two rhymes, wJnch being disposed inside and outside, 
oppose a remote echo to the close iteration of rhyme in the 
tercet; a couplet, returning to tlje rhymes of the tercet. 
In the three-foldness of a fJjought, the development sfjould 



45 

he the longest part, the conclusion the shortest, for best 
proportions. Hence the Cameo has its parts re^e^ively 
of three lines, four lines, two lines. In a sfjort form of 
poem, sometimes it is power to avoid many rJjymes; also 
it is a natural grace to have the conclusion return in some 
manner to the beginning and give an echo of it, and 
better if, being an echo in sense, it have also some recur- 
rence of form or sound; hence the ending couplet repairs 
back to the rhyme of the tercet. With this statement of 
structure, there are three laws which I think germane to 
this small form and necessary to its virtue, or at least 
to the best use and harmonising of it: /. It is better 
to have no end- stopped line in the tercet before the third 
line, and e§pecially not in the second line, for a stopped 
couplet should be avoided in the tercet: 2. For the same 
reason it is better not to end-stop the third line of the 
quatrain: ^, The tercet may encroach on the quat^ 
rain for reason, and if it be managed well, but never to 
the extent of a whole line; and the same is true of 
encroachment of the quatrain on the couplet — but this 
latter over-running requires the most satisfying conditions 
and handling, else it will be bad in effect. The third law 
is the most important, and indeed should be absolute, and 
in the fifty -one Cameos I have not broken it; but in 
many I have not been steadfast to the other two laws, 
and I fear often with unknown loss, albeit these laws 
perhaps may entertain exceptions. 

Of the notes for my friends : These notes I shall 
iise for two general purposes. First, for commenting. I 



shaU comment to you on my own work Just as freely as 
if it were anotbe/s work. The comments will be for 
three ends; first, to explain a Sonnet in any manner, as 
to its meaning, obje^, logic of treatment, order of unfold- 
ing, and the like, if this seem to me useful, or even if only 
I desire it; secondly, to hring specially into light or dis- 
cussion some points in the form; thirdly, to make note of 
the right manner of reading the Sonnet aloud, as I may 
conceive it. This last point may be one of no little 
worth; for a poem, like apiece of music, is written to be 
performed, and therefore it ought to be corre^, true in 
rhythm, phrasings, harmonies, and whatsoever charms the 
ear in a performance. But it is no obje^ion to a poem 
that it is difficult to perform, requiring a masterly accom- 
plishment, its rhythm being a mere jumble in an unable 
mouth — any more than it is a blemish in Mozart that no 
tyro can play his sonatas; and the tyro were but a bla:(e 
of vanity if thereupon he should deem the composer faulty 
in his rhythms and phrasings. 

The second general purpose of my friend-notes is to 
introduce you, my lovely friends, to one another. I were 
no better than a thief if I wished to myself alone the 
beauty, sweetness, nobility of you, that should ^read to 
one another's knowledge and happiness. Besides, I have 
a blissful pride, not unpardonable I hope, and seasoned 
with sorrow, in making you known to one another; for I 
have had, and can conceive, in my life no honors like 
your bestowals. 

My long letter hath come to its end. It remains only 



47 

to express once more the simpleness of my love of you 
and the joy of it, the benefit and happiness of my trust in 
you, my wish to be all I can to you in every way, and 
my exceeding blissful gratefulness for all your constancy 
and loving-kindness, for the preciousness of your letters, 
and for the dear sacred memories wherein you have 
builded a habitation for me. I pray you to accept this 
volume from me, not as what I would, but as all I can, 
and with a love that were expressed little by any per- 
formance. 



To. 



Private Edition of 225 Copies. 
No :. 



SONNETS, 



SONNETS. 
1. 

Strange thoughts of men — the new Jerusalem, 
A city like to glass of purest gold, 
With jasper walls, that did great gates uphold 
Each made of one vast pearl, and under them 
A masonry compact of every gem, 
Foundations of topaz whose yellow lusters rolled 
Round chrysolite, cornelian, beryl old. 
Sapphire and emerald that did the city hem. 
I'd give them all for violets under a tree, 
A strip of sea-beach with a lathyrus. 
East hill or west, as mom or eve might be. 
A cry of jay or owlet clamorous. 
Woods' colonade, the soft mould's fragrancy, 
Wild meadow pied, a river vaporous. 



II. 



Dreams are the glow of the day's embers. The flame 
Hath all forsaken the living deeds, and lo 1 
Their shapes that now lie sembling slumber, glow 
In the still witching time with natural aim. 
Voices aloud by day that praise or blame 
Whisper ghostly by night: and as none show 
Themselves to self save stript, so I do know 
Me stript in dreams, unbraced by fear or fame. 
Now of those visions let my soul be still. 
Still, thankful, and fearful; and let no mind 
In mire that wallows look for phantoms clean. 
For I can call me angels when I will. 
And never imps by night to me inclined 
But whom by day my soul hath sought and seen. 



III. 



If kings ask leave, and virtues hesitate, 
And "they do love who quake to say they love,' 
How comes it I these dignitaries shove 
Straightly aside, and match me with heart's mate? 
I dare my fervor, I whom many hate; 
And ask no leave, but perch my heart above 
To draw the nesting of the mourning dove 
Of all my life's devotion passionate. 
How comes it I to be so loving dare. 
And such a freedom make, and am so brave? 
That is no question, nor doth give me care. 
Thus I reply: The love I give and gave 
I do bestow without a thought to spare 
Upon return. None fear who nothing crave. 



IV. 



It is high royalty to love a Queen, 
Who is so far that I am still more far; 
As if I did aspire me to a star 
That looketh downward but not me hath seen. 
When such infinities do lie between 
And break like seas upon a sandy bar 
Where I do live, it doth not pale nor mar 
My love's perfection that I love my Queen. 
If I so low do shoot my love so high, 
'Tis like an arrow winged with such a force 
As doth enflame it on the yielding air. 
So when my love attaineth to that sky. 
It hath a fire engendered in its course. 
That 'tis not cast from heaven, but let stay there. 



V. 

Sweet friend, in many a troop perverse I find 
A melancholy brood about me play — 
Of slender gains hard got, and long delay. 
Travail of alien toils, lone griefs of mind, 
Farewells of love, foes fell in plots combined, 
Remembered smiles that melted soon away. 
Forgetful nights too brief, too long the day. 
Sweet follies foiled, which fled, the soul is blind. 
Then rose thy kind love on me like a star, 
Or like the heavens that to one luster grow 
Because so full with lights they crowded are. 
And then the space of all my ills took hue 
Like sky's sun-absent tincture, where shine so 
Thine eyes of love as stars from midnight's blue. 



VI. 



If I be poor, what of 't? There be the rich: 
If I be lone, fine companies do sit: 
If I be in the shade, there is a niche 
That up for bards and sages hath been lit. 
If I be sad, 'tis so; but some are bliss'd: 
If I be low, some foot the tops above: 
If I be loveless still, I see some kiss'd 
And warm entwined round with arms of love. 
If I be penned, I stand ; but powers outspread : 
What I have small, I see doth more abound: 
If I have little lore, riseth some head 
Marveled with gift that doth the spheres expound. 

When 'mong these thronging things I sing my way. 

I lose me in them, then am rich as they. 



VII. 

I love thee, dear, for making me a lover. 
As one beset i' the ambushed world, might cry — 
Or with more eloquent tears, words of the eye — 
Blessing the giver of unthreatened cover; 
Or as a hunted bird preferred to hover 
About a tender heart that did espy 
Danger and warn him, rather than to fly 
Free to the safety of the air above her. 
Nor fended sole, nor valiant; — pride so grand, 
Loving thee, lifts me, I myself am fame, 
Moving unmoved with the powerful o' the land: 
And more than proud — devout; my love 's a brand 
From altar ta'en to ply with holy flame 
False fanes, and burn them where they stand. 



VIII. 

Brother, thee I beheld entomb thy dead, 
And weep therewith. Well, tears are upland springs; 
Let flow; but listen to them. Over bed 
Filled from the hills thy sorrow flows and sings. 
Did ever fall the rain or river flow 
But it rolled down from an aerial place? 
So is thy love an altitude, below 
From whose sublimity tears run apace. 
Follow thy freshet of grief, climb up its course 
Far to thy tops of love, where wilt thou be 
When thou shalt sit with sorrow at its source? 
On heights wilt stand, the sky engulfing thee. 

So tears run down, love up, but not in strife; 

They tell of heavens, both font and port of life. 



IX. 

Dear love, thou art my exercise in heart; 
Beloved of my leal soul, thou givest me 
Pure practice in love, wherein by constancy 
Of loving thee I grow to love's best part. 
For as in music's sweet and spiritual art, 
If one by prevalence advance to be 
In one piece master, master in many is he, 
So one love constant doth love's skill impart. 
Never one loveth well but who learns how: 
And thou, heart's best, with whom my soul doth bum 
Each several hour, thus trainest me in love. 
Thence, while my friends grow dearer, mayhap now. 
If they do prize my love, soon they will learn 
They have it of thee, my poor heart far above. 



X. 



There is a world within the world, the folk 
Whereof are fairies, canty kobolds, sprites, 
Pixies and sylphs and frisky elves o' nights 
That under velvet mullens do convoke, 
And sip the dew from cups of film unbroke 
That last for aye. They dance by glow-worm lights. 
Or moony spheres of fog, and toss, with bonny sleights. 
Each waggish cap about, and goblin cloak. 
About this fairy world is run a ring, 
A belt of bad, dark doubt and callous clay. 
That few pass over to the fairy places: 
But simple hearts, that love, and often sing. 
Blithely believe, keep faith, and gaily play, — 
The fairies know these and peep into their faces. 



XI. 



Sit ye, children: I'll tell ye a fairy tale: 
What? because ye are sprites and play me tricks 
Yourselves, and with your waggish frolics mix 
My poor old pate that grows totty and frail? 
Not so ! The Elfin Chronicles I hail 
For love of airy Ariel, antic nix. 
On such blithe fancies I my soul do fix 
Against the nipping o' the world's chill gale. 
Ah! little ones, in regions wonderful 
Keep ye your souls enchanted, from the din 
Where common clamors and mean maxims pass ; 
So shall ye live in parleys beautiful — 
Nay, what? The tale? Ah! yes; I will begin: 
'Once on a time, and a very good time it was" — 



XII. 



Thy beauty is a commonalty dear — 
Like stars that shine all night of every night, 
And the two twilights every day bedight 
The soft self-same, and the amber atmosphere. 
Thou dost not blaze like jewels where inhere 
The bitter fires that formed the crystals bright, 
The flame that melted, then edged them with fierce light 
That now grown cold, flashes to cut and spear. 
These be like to the haughty dames that wear them, 
In stately musters gleaming, handsome and bold. 
Rich eyes dropping disdain, and lips twice curled. 
Thy beauty is like sounds when soft winds bear them, 
The dawn just flushing, evening's velvet gold. 
And the round blue that doth embrace the world. 



XIII. 

If I be questioned whether 't be the day 
Doth follow night around the flowery world, 
Or whether night, with sandals dewy pearled, 
Pursue the morn, that wooed will not delay, — 
I answer thus : First tell me which makes way. 
My love to me, or I to her, when furled 
The camping light's gold streamers be, and curled 
With spiral vapors falleth twilight ray? 
If 'tis my part to woo with will, hath erst 
Her beauty not pursued me, will or no. 
And natural the more as 'tis not willed? 
Like day and night, a twain without a first, 
True lovers know not either follows so. 
Or either leads — whom both one love hath filled. 



XIV. 

How beautiful and sweet to fall asleep, 
'Neath tent of gray, with temperate weariness! 
Deliciously our feet defer to press 
With forward day that now far off doth creep. 
Invoke we to our breast a nothingness. 
Yet without fright, as one 'neath poppies dreaming 
Consumes their spectral rest and feels him teeming 
With feats of might too big for wakefulness. 
How beautiful and sweet at mom to wake 
And know we love ! — at mom of sunbeams fashioned! 
How liberal, flushed and fleet, pinioned with bliss, 
Hours fly above and verging circuits make ! 
As love is to day's light, mom's morn impassioned. 
So weariness is to night, slumber submiss. 



XV. 

"Where be your gibes now." thou chalked mock. 
And thy heart-sick gags ? Art gone of thine own staieness ? 
And all the melancholy players, over whose paleness 
Were dabbed the lies of smiles and ruby stock 
Of health ? Yon old ring, like a ghost, doth knock 
At my heart strangely, with vehement love, and the frailness 
Of our mortal state stares from the painted haleness 
On the tan where dizzy phantom-riders flock. 
Have ye died, worn out? Or doth poverty pinch ye? 
Or have ye fallen and become no better 
Than your luxurious betters that beheld ye ? 
Whate'er you do or be or suffer, "inch ye 
Along," dear souls; I would not spend a letter 
But to love ye and moan the strange woes that compelled ye. 



XVI. 

Dear love, I do forget thee time by time — 
I can not keep how tender is thy heart; 
Till comes thy loving script, more sweet than rhyme, 
Dearer than music, showing what thou art. 
Half do I lose how fair thy gentle looks — 
Till I behold thee in some window niche 
And read thy face, more lovely than fine books, 
Learning anew thy precious beauty rich. 
In ear the sweetness of thy voice doth pale — 
1 can not hold a harmony so soft. 
Till with me once again it doth avail. 
And teacheth me things learned already oft. 
Forgetting so, I fall in love anew 
Each time I have thee, dear, in blessed view. 



XVII. 

Yea, I forget, yet each time less forget. 
And am surprised with thy sweet beauty's light. 
Yet ever less surprised; so in thy debt 
For soul enlarged am I by day, by night. 
As oft as I behold thee, gentle love, 
I have lost part, not all. I had before : 
What 's left thy beauty then doth build above. 
And so in heart 1 grow from more to more. 
Thou art so beautiful, so true and kind, 
No wonder 'tis that never all I learned; 
I must come oft to see, as eye and mind 
Climb oft the hill to know what 's there discerned. 
In this most happy I, that I do grow 
To love thee more, whose height still keeps me low. 



XVIII. 

I tell ye, lovers of Nature, for every grace 
And glory over summits that ye find, 
The like will I show ye in the plain combined. 
That mingles its meekness with the mountain's base. 
For what are Alps but the low plains in space 
Upheaved ? And with what light the top hath shined. 
It is the one self sun that hath inclined 
To fields champaign ere they could lift their face. 
The stars that march round mountain lordliness 
Glimmer lucent and clear in moorland pools ; 
Savannas frame and hoist the clouds that span 
Great peaks. So — men top men, and I confess 
Their greatness, and the glory of great schools; — 
Yet cry All Hail I to the one stuff in man. 



XIX. 

love, let us amass large memories 
Of enterprises, for these be true love's wealth; 
To mix in brave things and fine pleasantries, 
Adventures, thoughts, great works, is lovers' health ; 
Whereby, when Age creeps on us craftily, 
He findeth open doors and no forbiddance. 
But he may feed at his will, so happily 
Our stores keep Age and us with Youth's fair riddance. 
What though with age sweet vagabondage cease, — 
We can not dance so, climb so, as we did. 
Yet love 's life-wealthy if with life's decrease 
Youth leave us fortune in twain memories hid. 

Therefore, dear love, pile up occasions, spare not; 

In these married forever, more we care not. 



XX. 

Returned from other songs, I am like one 
Who left his hearth-stone for a world outside. 
And turned this way and that, and wandered wide, 
And many parts in fine affairs hath done. 
But now to fireside of mine own I run. 
And sooner wish 't, as I the wind did ride, — 
My one own song wherein thou dost reside. 
And mak'st a home of joy whose like is none. 
And now I see thee shine more sweet, more rare. 
More lovely than before — so Time doth bless thee. 
And graceth me that more thy grace doth show. 
O, therefore give me sometimes forth to fare; 
Yet never far, where sight may not possess thee ; 
That I from beauty learn beauty to know. 



XXI. 

Poor film, thin felted pulp of watery lint. 
What web is this to bear the figurement 
Whose tinctures Shakespeare's fancy doth invent, 
Shining through words like sun with various tint 
Through opal wines! If it but gave a hint 
That once on it his hand had spread its tent, 
Beneath which while it slept his fraught descent 
Of heavenly visions he did on it print. 
How precious then ! Yet this scrap bears the dint 
Of his mind's touch — most rich equivalent ! 
His sacred wit the tissue doth indent, 
And doth engild it from his flaming mint. 

marvel ! that then he lived, then died, yet now 
Speaks me from this faint clip graved with his brow. 



XXII. 

The wish to sing is with a grace endowed 
To be itself a perfect blissful song, 
That ever lodging in mine ear aloud 
His chamber fills with music sweet and long. 
The song which is harmonious desire 
Singeth a second to all things glad and good, 
Whereto the first is birds, brooks, starry fire. 
The breath of hills, flower's bloom, and rustling wood. 
Encompass me these many voices dear, 
Where love hath spoke, bird warbled, runnel purled : 
Wherefore, what matters it that none me hear, 
Since hearken I the voice of all the world. 
Yet I do crave one gallant wreath of bays — 
To sing to thee, and wear thy kiss of praise. 



XXIII. 

Such distances fond beings disunite 
That 'tis a strife how space to overpass : 
One man doth think the misty gaps to spite 
And bring all near with eyes of oval glass ; 
One, "of imagination all compact," 
The poet, thinks by fancy's nimble spring 
To overleap the pickets of plain act. 
And traverse heavens on visionary wing. 
But now I have divined the perfect way. 
By light of thy dear absence, precious friend : 
Cleaving to thee in soul, though here I stay. 
Hath shown me of grim voids to make an end. 
For I so follow thee, that to my heart 
'Tis all one place, love, here and where thou art. 



XXIV. 

The furious potter! What if in the span 
Of his fantastic fury he had died 
Reviled for will perverse, before the pride 
Of his accomplishment undid the ban? 
And ah! what souls have lived that close up ran 
To some fine verge — of art, letters, or tide 
Of wealth, or love — full potent, and just this side 
O' the vantage stopped, of man unknown— of man! 
For them who persevere, being given to live. 
And by a leap surpass the difficult bar. 
All men have love, and flood their fame abroad : 
But who to them that drop and die doth give 
Love and reversion, and uplift them far? 
For this they have no one but God. But God 1 



XXV. 

Inveterate fetters that about me meet, 
Manacles clamped around my very heart 
And pressed into its substance, pinions that part 
And bar from every petty thing my feet. 
Around my neck, limbs, hands, complete 
Be hung and ring. Gladsome and blest thou art. 
My thralled plight, whereby my soul doth start 
Thrilled with obedience at her accent sweet. 
O ! I would not be freed. Brothers, I tell ye 
Rather I wear these shackles unremitting 
Than I would sun me in a songful wild: 
Not for the wealth of isles my heart would sell ye 
In my strong bonds one moment of my sitting, 
Nor might in me of one sweet woman mild. 



XXVI. 

The day no end to earth's sweet beauty shows, 
But night no bounds of worlds where beauty springs : 
If round this earth, this sun, such fairness clings. 
What beauteous wealth those numerous fires compose. 
This glory and grace, that doth no end disclose, 
Cometh of endless love; to Him it sings 
Who " taketh up the isles as little things," 
In Whom the sparrows feed, the lily blows. 
What can I with these beauties made of Love, 
These boundless glories ? What but cleave to sky, 
To earth, loving Love's creatures joyfully 1 
this doth lift me time and breath above : 
Perforce I am one soul with what I cry 
In love unto, — of one eternity. 



XXVII. 

" If I the truest truth of love do know, 
One pang outweighs a thousand pleasures far ; " 
So saith great Angelo, and at the bar 
Of this his thought I ponder long and slow. 
Is 't true? If true, why is't? Shall ever so 
One pang o'er-ripe, where sweet joys gathered are 
Like fruits mature, them all infect and mar, 
As one rot's ooze through ruddy heaps will flow? 
Is it that love love's tenderness doth take 
As natural fruits, but love's wound is a thing 
Unnatural, pestilent, turning Nature ill? 
But I will pray, dear love, I may not make 
Such blight o'er all the bliss that I would bring. 
Nor that bruise give that drips through pleasure still. 



XXVIII. 

Sweetly befalls, when eye and mind are weary, 
And eye and mind, both tired, both wink the world, 
That then descendeth on me, soft unfurled, 
Vision of gentle thee, lightsome, cheery. 
Then shuts my book, and naught I reck, my dearie. 
But shutting fast mine eyes, and then am whirled 
To sylvan place where every leaf 's impearled 
With thy sweet image in a dewdrop sphery. 
When I do find thee in that bosky spot, 
That fairy realm wherein my shut eyes ope. 
And mark the loving mirth of thy quaint smile 
Peep o'er my shoulder in each dewy dot, 
I know not in which joy joy more hath scope, — 
Thy witching beauty, or me devout the while. 



XXIX. 

Tis they whom best I love, I best can lose ; 
For they leave most behind and least are lost. 
They who do " evil entreat " me wring no cost 
Of thoughts when gone — 'tis tribute I refuse ; 
But they who me did ever kindly use, 
And loved me, and I them, can not be crossed 
By bleak conclusion, nor with black frost 
Sealed up. whose noon of love sad me subdues. 
They fade — 'tis I go blind, not they have fled: 
But those who make a bitter loss indeed 
Are whom I unkind left uncomforted. 
I am deserted of them, but not freed; 
Their faces stare at me when they are dead. 
Filling the air with looks that starve and pleads 



XXX. 

Listening the parlance of dewy leaves that spill 
Their syllables at morning dripping words 
To one another, or lulling lapse of rill, 
Or fall and filter of rain, or hidden birds 
Of night with their soft notes, or brooding thrill 
Of hush 'fore dawn, or twilight low of herds 
Homeward, and village hum becoming still, 
Or watery hush that copse of willow girds, — 
With these a stillness doth my spirit hold 
Submiss to silence hallowed and old ; 
For here 1 am not wont to speak, nor bold 
Unto the muteness that doth all enfold ; 
But, O beloved, 'tis then I am most near 
Fit voice of love for thee when silent here. 



XXXI. 

All weather is good by minding, or not minding ; 
If I at rosy morn betake me early 
Into the fields where vaporous spirals curly 
Furl about leaves and webs. I, gladly finding 
Beauty for seeing, along with Nature winding, 
Well do rejoice. But if the morn be surly 
With brows of clouds lowering, and winds are burly, 
Then inward vision wakes, the outward blinding. 
Now, hark 'e friend, the secret I will read thee 
How thou Shalt walk all climates independent. 
And hold thy rosy cheer in any weather: 
The secret is — so may good angels speed thee — 
Have good society. I keep resplendent 
Good company — myself and me together. 



XXXII. 

Jewels glinting and clear, brilliant, lightening? 
But mute and unmemorial these for me: 
Betrothal gifts for this our day ? Ah ! be 
Advised what values love will feel and hold. 
Get me a thought, a great, good thought, brightening 
The earth; and weave it, vital and fresh from thee, 
With syllables of music fittingly, 
Like gem set with enamelings and gold. 
What sayest thou, love ? This were great heightening 
Of dear expense, price more than payeth he 
Who brings me trinkets rarest, quaintest, old ? 
If canst not make, then wish 't and find — so tightening 
More love around my heart full blissfully 
Than girdles of best brilliants could infold. 



XXXIII. 

What ho! ye revelers where flowers festoon 
A maze of mocks of smiles that jealous show 
What envies small o'ertop fantastic toe, 
And mimicry of music creaks a tune — 
Where jeweled girlet and her tailed gossoon 
In such a whirling involution go 
As mixes more the cup of brain that so 
Seemed erst a batter puddled with a spoon ! 
I love not such a rout. 'Tis greater boon 
To roll my wheel beneath the fluent moon, 
And hear October's breezy bare-bough rune : 
The while with my one love I do commune, 
Who with me lives by eve, by morn and noon» 
As Autumn silent-rich, sweet-voiced as June. 



XXXIV. 

The grass with dew 's not braver on the land 
Than I jeweled with thee. I am so proud, 
Being loved of thee, methinks that yonder cloud, 
Whose birth is heaven, my brow express hath fanned; 
And gentle flowers solicit of my hand 
To pluck them, and assembling planets crowd 
In diadems for me, that am allowed 
Within the margin of thy love to stand. 
When come these things terrestrial unto me. 
And these celestial things, and bend me o'er, 
I see one joy is mother of all earth. 
These I love better for my love of thee. 
And by that virtue then love thee the more: 
So all my joys grow this — My love hath worth. 



XXXV. 

Speak; In silent view lie vale and hill; 
Speak thou, — 1 not for loving verbals call — 
Speak only; let thy voice above me fall; 
Once only speak, — the voids with volume fill; 
Speak only softly, — but prevail it will; 

speak but softly once — it floodeth all: 

Nay, mute thy voice to murmurs, worlds are small; 
Nay, breathe but in my vision sole, — then still I 
How dumb were earth without the human voice, 
What a dread roar of mutterings it were, 
What elemental travail for completeness ! 
And thou whose tone the most sweet is, rejoice, 

1 pray thee, that thou setst my heart astir 

With general note joined with thy one own sweetness. 



XXXVI. 

What matters who they be that greatness mold 
In their own hands, so be It the greatness thrive? 
First place hath this, that glorious beauties hive 
In the blest earth; second, whose fortunes hold 
Fair and fine things: and first, that worlds enfold 
Amazing loves, that do from Heavens arrive 
Like precious freights; but second, who contrive 
That happy they shall wear the cloth of gold. 
If thou of thine own coffers be so glad. 
Have I not larger wit to lend me joy, 
That know f exult in wealth without an end 
Harbored in earth? And shall I not be clad 
In natural relish, though one hard by employ 
More of some stuffs? Go to! Thou'rt churlish, friend. 



XXXVII. 

Thy faults? They are but thy dear self brought near. 
See yonder niountain, round whose edges fly 
The sun's low beams, upslanting; it doth spear 
The heavens, an amethyst cone on amber sky. 
The violet slope is smooth; but when we go, 
As planned for early morrow, up the steep, 
Tis piled with crags and ridges, row on row, 
And rough uneven ways, and crevice deep. 
Yet when at evening here again we gaze. 
Twill shine as smooth and violet as before. 
And melt in the soft light, while with amaze 
Eye looks for gullies feet did late explore. 

I spy some faults, being nigh — yet nigh would be : 
Then leave thee, and afar sole beauty see. 



XXXVIII. 

'Tis very dark : keep close to me, my True, — 
For love, not pity, that we go together 
Where now 'tis dark : but darkness only nether, 
Whence "fiery oes engild" the sunless blue. 
I am as with a lamp I did pursue 
Deep forest aisles in foul and pitchy weather 
At night, eye strained, like a. wild thing at tether. 
To pierce the glooms that do the path imbrue. 
But when I pause afraid, what next unknowing, 
Around me then the lantern in my hand 
Like to a little sky illumes a view: 
I linger central in the circle glowing. 
And its soft fringes: but when from off that stand 
I must move on, keep close to me, my True. 



XXXIX. 

Beloved one, I do bid thee think me great: 
Sad me hath me composed sad contrition — 
Things done, undone, vain pangs of mean ambition, 
Follies, complaints, poor wraths that quick abate. 
Expense and nipping losses, lean estate. 
Enforced base repulse, more base submission, 
Myself contemning m.y bemocked condition : 
Yet, loved one, I do bid thee think me great! 
For I in love of thee am like the sea 
When it brake forth from the Word of God and rolled 
Into its gulfs, tumultuous purity. 
To the untouched floods I will not second me 
In the pure love of thee my deeps do hold. 
What is the greatness like to this can be ! 



XL. 

Is God not glad of his creatures? Tell me that. 
Then for no part may I in such a wise 
Be woeful as doth not to each separate guise 
Convene the whole, where Love in joy hath sat. 
Black gloom is noisome, lees of a most foul vat 
Where impious mixtures steam, — smut, blot, blurs, lies 
Ambushed i' the coward's beard, sly ears, fell eyes, 
Flaw, fleck, stain, grime, venoms decay begat. 
But I do love th' abundant cheerful light. 
And I do love the loving bards of light, 
Who all life long the splendor chant on earth 
That all day long from morning shines on earth, 
Twixt the two twilights of enameled gold, — 
The bards like deeps that do enheaven the gold. 



XLI. 

Tell me what harmonies my soul recites; 
O tell me, dearest love, If in thine ear 
My song hath concords and my voice sweet cheer, 
As to thine eyes be soft and lovely lights. 
Or tell me if my chant rest thee o' nights. 
If my dear rhyme console thy mind, that fear 
Is banished far, nor can in dark appear, 
And all thy dreams be made of happy sights. 
As Day the morn and eve doth equal paint. 
Reproach me if not precious store I bring 
To thee awaked — visions sweet and quaint, — 
Or not my music through thy slumber ring. 
Chastise me with the patience of thy plaint, 
O gentle heart, if 'tis not so I sing. 



XLII. 

Round me the waters roar in raging train: 
Far as eye sees they push like wild herds past 
And stream their manes, the boat a pannier vast 
That many broad and vaulting backs sustain. 
Yet them I ride as still as the deep plain 
On which they prance, because the watery blast 
Uncalms not love, that moots no fear, but fast 
Holds like still skies, though earth may heave and strain. 
Therefore, ho! for ye, steeds and spirits wild! 
On with ye! rush, and let your breathing blow, 
And bear me with you at your furious will. 
I shall sit on you quiet as a child; 
And ye, like storms flung against heaven, but show 
Heights out of reach, and heart of love how still. 



XLIII. 

Let me inhabit the inward of thy being, 
Beloved, for so love loves. I'd live where rays 
Of all thy soul disperse to spread thy days. 
And then converge again unto my seeing. 
Love is not love that buildeth double, freeing 
Each from the other for some several ways; 
Such love is but departure and dispraise, 
Perpetually unwed, untrothed, fleeing. 
True lovers mingle as twain waters do, 
Thence one by quality inevitable; 
Or coupling atmospheres, diffused through 

And mutually dissolved unseparable; 

Whose passion unto oneness knows no two, 
Each in each found and lost unseverable. 



XLIV. 

I am not old until my hopes be spent; 
I care not what, all may be bome or spared, 
This fortune or that fame, how well I fared, 
How ill, old pains awaked, new discontent. 
But when some hopes have died, and some be rent. 
This eye is dark, the sight of that despaired, 
To other skies flown faith my skies have aired; 
The soul then suddenly is gray and bent. 
Yet though 'twas so that first I felt me old. 
And knew my years that they were many, still 
My wishes streamed — unhoped, but warm as truth; 
Which is no more than that my love hath hold 
On what's once loved, with dear undying will: 
And love unbated is perpetual youth. 



XLV. 

Farewell, old friends! We 've traveled long together; 
And intimate ye were, ye and my heart : 
Belike 'tis need that now at last we part, 
Who 've clung so long through foul and lovely weather. 
For when I knew ye first, my youth's bright feather 
Was just full-fledged, that I abroad should start: 
Now I am old, and ye, like thought or art, 
Grown never old, forsake me at my tether. 
'Twas so I knew my age, that ye did leave me : 
Here of an evening, ruddy and gay were ye. 
Youthful bright hopes — gone when I woke at morn. 
Yet wishes ye flattered stay, and cheer, not grieve me, 
Stately and sweet as saintly spirits be 
Whose hearts are broke. Else were I twice forlorn. 



XLVI. 

Always I will deny that circumstance 
Inferreth the volume of loving : more I affirm 
Is justice than conjunctions, truth than chance, 
And love is honesty lifted to utmost term. 
Unto what man amasses brother's part, 
A brother's love and brother's hand amain 
For me, give 1 my equity of heart ; 
Not to blood's tie that may be but blood's stain. 
What? Must I hallow veins that filter red, 
When 'tis a cruel scarlet, not ruddy truth? 
I will not false my chrism of love on head 
That sainteth not love, though blood of mine, good sooth. 

Love ill deserved is ill, like false bill paid; 

None have 't with right but what right heart hath made. 



XLVII. 

They are all gathered in thee, beloved, the toilers: 
And I, with life's most honored dignity 
Well crowned, commandment of my time, — the moilers 
I love with passion through my love of thee. 
Heart's dearest. Oh thy labors! Thy small fingers 
Spoil hoarding Time of all his counters, — clutch 
Them from his minute guards ; nor thy hand lingers 
Twixt twilights from doing more, however much. 
O, I give labor, taste its excellence, 
Righteously earn a presence on the earth. 
But toil with thoughts, taste pauses, rapturous sense; 
Thou moilest where gain growls and beauty 's no worth. 
Dear friend, my saint of toil, when I contrive me 
Some rest, I cry thee first. Forgive me ! Shrive me ! 



XLVIII. 

Small toiling hands — I love them. Be it mine, 
Who would but can not spare them, far to fend 
The strain and struggle from thy soul, sweet friend, 
And, by a heart's-ease, strife to hands confine. 
How can I have this virtue? How divine, 
By augury of loving, ways to bend 
Thought like an arm around thee, dear, and lend 
Thee back my power that first was thine? 
One answer I may render : When I know 
What these small hands perform, then they in toil 
Make husbandry of me and till my heart. 
Will not this make thee joy? Will not this blow 
A power thy spirit through ? Will not this foil 
Some jaded gloom that else might be thy part? 



XLIX. 

"0 leam to read what silent love hath writ" — 
So saith the "Star of Poets" — pray thee, hearken — 
•• To hear with eye belongs to love's fine wit ": 
Then sure unto thy heart I shall not darken, 
Nor more be mute, but in both light and sound 
My love with all thy sensory engages. 
And with a music I can mure thee round. 
Though all my voice be writ into my pages. 
I tune thee songs of love most fain and true : 
What though, pent wretchedly, I fetch not near thee, 
If thy dear eye will twofold office do, 
And thou avouch me, " Love, I read and hear thee!" 
Then I can bear my foggy offing well. 
If each writ word be both a light and bell. 



When mid the threats of fierce impending things 
I know not how to turn me in the noises, 
When this alarum roars, that war-whoop rings, 
Here speeds a bolt and there an arrow poises, — 
When the wild raving fury of the world 
Mine own unreasonable sally rouses. 
And I am this way torn and that way hurled, 
By plots am rent, ambushed from friend-like houses, — 
Or when my own enfrenzied angers fly. 
Or love-lacks torture hard, or smiles betray, 
And I am left, or beaten down I lie, 
Then in my mind with simple love I say: 
Look not — it would disquiet thee, mine own: 
Go thy sweet gentle way, and leave me lone. 



LI. 

Bright days, ye are cool lovely shadows of June. 
That fond month's reminiscence moves the hours 
To lustres that glow but burn not, and, for boon 
Of blossoms past, whole trees flush more than flowers. 
The red fruits glisten too, and golden skies 
Fall from the top of noon on fields of gold. 
And wave with winds ; day's two extremes of dyes 
And the full aureate middle the meadows hold. 
June bids her semblance dress in all her brightness. 
Yet over to hang a lace misty and soft, 
That warmer hues attempers with a whiteness 
Befits youth's "dear expense" that flies aloft. 

So June, departing, with fond promise yearns; 

What loveth so to linger sure returns. 



LII, 



You yellow plumes, to what can I compare 
Your beauties, and wealth profuse of gold — 
To what that is more rich than you, or bold 
To make comparison? Only the air; 
Nay, also rain; these elementals wear 
Colors in perfect plumes like yours, as old 
As the first rainbow, and they unfold, 
Like you, their wealth in wilds, and never spare. 
Ye are the gilding of sweet shades at noon ; 
Ye are the dew dissolving the dawn's fire; 
Ye are a vapor of a sunny rain. 
You yellow brushes, sweep my soul, and soon 
Cleanse me of what unsimple is, nor tire 
To draw me unto love of you amain. 



LIII. 

Dear Verse, thou art almost a living being 
Unto my heart, a spirit that can love me ; 
I draw me to thee in sweet bondage, seeing 
With worship's eye thy loveliness above me. 
Almost the loving Lord of life, meseems. 
In pity of my loneness, while I slept 
Like Adam, took thee from next my heart of dreams, 
And gave thee me to be most precious kept. 
For since 'twas so, I have not been all lonely. 
Nor wounded so but song might heal or bless me: 
If I be sad, what odds I have thee only — 
So quick dost come, and to thy heart so press me! 
I say thou livest to me, loving Verse, 
Whose love my joys doth gather, grief disperse. 



LIV. 

My days, ye are fell full of loud dissension: 
While rude affairs in fierce pitched battles rage. 
With one and all my heart a war doth wage ; 
So each with each, I all, join hot contention. 
But never din nor wrath can do prevention 
Of the sweet quiets that my soul engage 
With silences of song and blest presage 
Of love, lifting me to grand ascension. 
Tumult and turmoil margined is and mingled 
With two proved valors to which all surrender, — 
The bravery of song and of a lover. 
By these are intervals of labor singled ; 
I pause — instant am girt with music tender, 
And like to voice with it her love doth hover. 



LV. 

0. love. I am old! Dear. I am very old! 
Nay, thy chiding I hear, and know 'tis truth. 
That in the heart is everlasting youth: 
Kind words from thee, from me but selfish-cold. 
May not a heart in love be over-bold 
And vaunt itself too high ? I fear, in sooth. 
In crumbling frame love may be like a ruth 
Of relics mid ruins where night-tales are told. 
Love, listen and understand : If poorest I 
Though poor could give thee some rich jewel at length. 
In a fine gold would I not have it framed? 
So ought my love in flaming ambit lie 
Of rich avail of youth and glowing strength, 
Thee to be offered. Love. I am sad and shamed. 



LVI. 

I am most happy, love, in this, that thou 
Art happier. Yet so most happy I ? 
Can I be glad if thou, howe'er thou try, 
To end of time canst not exceed my now? 
Nay, never so ; for this I must allow — 
I cannot happy be unless I spy 
Thee happier still, with sweet lights in thine eye 
That new from heaven have fallen on thy brow. 
How solve me this? If happier thou, 'tis cause 
I run beyond thee and am happier still: 
Then so again unjoyed, sadly I pause 
Till that thou happier be I have my will. 
Ah! love, mayhap we thus must read love's laws — 
Neither is glad till both the measure fill. 



LVII. 

Beloved, let me so love thee as It were 
The last time I should see thee. O, belike 
There are sweet prosperous days in store, and strike 
Will many hours when we shall close confer: 
Yet, when our very shadows had breath to stir 
The leaves, so still and lissome fell each spike 
Drooping, in that one walk along the pike 
'Neath harvest moon, by woods of pine and fir, 
Ah! had we known 'twas all! Dear, It behooves 
The lone religion of my love to hold 
Thee as an angel that was here, now known 
No more — vanished. 0, my love moves 
In every fond inclusion thee t' enfold 
With bliss, as here, but awed, as thou were flown. 



LVIII. 

Thou dear, why heart-full pour I love and praise? 
Is 't for thy delicate beauty? No: yet rise 
That doth, — like stars that sole to fortunate gaze 
Askance fill up the voids, — unto mine eyes. 
Is 't for thine honor of me, reverent, rich? 
Would 't were! Alas! my little worth hath swerved 
Thy love on bend far wide of that; of which 
I 'd more complain if I not less deserved. 
I love thee for the shining of thy soul 
With that sweet light subdued that doth subdue: 
Wit's gleam is common; 'tis the rare unroll 
Volumes of light that be like heaven's blue: 
As if the sun, temp'ring his beams, had shorn 
His fleece to be thy robe when thou wert born. 



LIX. 

Versing doth give me ecstasy of joy 
No poet lone can feel. First did song 
Roll up my solitude with billow strong, 
Flood tide — sheer music, else without alloy. 
So much doth any poet's heart employ 
In single measure full; me doth belong 
A double portion now, a blessed throng 
Of spoused symphonies no pains destroy. 
For if song go unwed, 'tis but a lone 
Wandering shadow; lonely and sad meseems 
A manly lay that hath no wedded state. 
But when my song is sped, to thee 'tis flown, 
Beautiful spirit; and like two mixing streams 
Of the same flood, thy love and the music mate. 



LX. 

0, he that hath the gift to stroll, tender 
Of heart, along life's ways, and goeth singing 
For all souls lowly peace, to many bringing 
Renewing joys that erst did roll slender 
And few for them, 'tis he that sole, lender 
Of power and faith to men, and strongly clinging 
With love to them, should hear the belfries ringing 
That do high meeds of honor's scroll render. 
For what is greatness? What is glory's glory, 
True and unfeigned life, unmixed beauty? 
Is 't clang of tongues? Is 't gilded fame's reflection? 
Is 't wit a-blaze in rhyme or art or story ? 
Naught these beside God's works. But infinite is duty, 
And love, or man's or God's, is one perfection. 



LXI 

If I do love thee, 'tis but thy dear due. 
What then? I can not beg thee give to me 
Thy love's requital, while I offer thee 
No more than is thine own most certain due. 
But argue thus: How could the noblest woo. 
If all must only love full worthily? 
'Tis a sad lower state beloved to be 
Than 'tis to love; yet how could noblest woo? 
Wherefore, beloved, though I give all my heart 
To thee whose right is still the noblest heart, 
And so thou owest me nothing, thus I plead: 
Love not because beloved by me thou art, 
But love me for the high soul that thou art. 
And then for my most lone and lowly need. 



LXII. 

I woke with light of love illuming out, 
That did behind mine eyes lift and appear, 
And from within me forth shone round about. 
And made the day, and filled the welkin clear. 
Yet when I looked, so love-waked, I beheld 
Risen in the heavens the daily punctual Sun, 
And Night departing smiles to be compelled 
By such a king, so rich his envoys run. 
The calendar orb had long his ancient right, 
And woke my childish eyes with playmate ray; 
But when I loved, love proved the elder light. 
And showed me first what meant a dawn of day. 
So love and light come of one stock and birth. 
Mixing to make a day-break on the earth. 



LXIII. 

I know not what 's more fine than fine defiance; — 
Like to the oak, silent, while noisy air 
Whips cries from itself i' the branches; like the fair 
Blue sky that suffers tempest with compliance, 
Unattentive, Methinks a pool's reliance 
On flowing o'er a blow, doth nobly dare — 
That doth to blows and stars his bosom bare. 
But drowneth blows in confluent deniance, 
I have seen dogs — good creatures — "bay the moon," 
And critic snarl at poet, clowns at kings. 
At singers they who ne'er could croak a tune. 
At riches he no doit who earns nor brings: 
But moon nor king I never knew give boon 
Of note o' the dogs and clowns and clamorous things. 



LXIV. 

"Pitch thy behavior low, thy projects high," 
Saith gentle Herbert. Why, 'tis counseled well. 
And yet methinks I wish a bard to tell 
Reversal of these virtues we may try. 
My projects low, behavior up, would I — 
Fame's famishing, ambition's dreams dispel, 
Nor greedy after riches buy and sell. 
But walk about with kingdoms in mine eye. 
Did you dislike me, friend? I never knew it. 
Did this I did displease you? Was it so? 
Did thus you hurt me ? Nay, I felt you not. 
I bear a part, — I'll take my leave, and to it. 
Farewell. Each to his path, as I will go. 
I have you nor remembered nor forgot. 



LXV. 

'T were joy in wastes or wilds to live with thee- 
But not the joyfulest. To love thee lone 
Were bliss and life, — and yet my soul must own 
A richer paradise conceived in me; 
Yea, and assembled! I love thee — yet I see 
My other loves are crowding every zone, 
Even all the noble souls; and friends whose tone 
Is my ear's full-peopled world, they precious be: 
Ay, and the speechless creatures too I love — 
Unspeaking sole, not dumb their moving cries — 
Yea, and the hills, trees, brooks, a fern, a flower. 
But, dear, these marvels of beings are joys above 
Their state because by love thou art mine eyes. 
Then by all loves thou 'rt dearer every hour. 



LXVI. 

Who saith to friend, "Happy New Year!" not vain 
Blessing doth utter. Let heart enfold 
What one dear thing it hath, or new or old, 
And not unblest will any thing remain. 
If one each hour new merriments hath ta'en, 
What man but once the while with sport made bold. 
But brooded on 't the hours, in 's heart did hold. 
Of equal moments hath made equal gain. 
Time hath a bounty to his utmost end, 
Yea, momentary bliss, for soul whose fire 
Of thanks hath on one joy's lone altar burned. 
Wherefore the season's benediction spend. 
Brave hearts, on one another, with desire 
Of mutual love to mutual valor turned. 



LXVII. 

Old Time awoke and cried to New Year Morn, 
"Ho, thou new servant, up! and to thy station!" 
Quoth Mom, "Rub thy old eyes to contemplation; 
I wear no mien but all the days have worn." 
When Evening came, gruff Time showed no such scorn ' 
" My new pretty maid!" quoth he, with fond persuasion. 
" Not new, big sir," said Evening; " since creation 
No grace have I but doth all nights adorn." 
Herein are parables, in which Time deals 
With my soul straightly, anon my soul with Time, 
To make New Year Day rich with many seasons: 
Of morning harbingers, what one not steals 
On me, year through, with scrip of heights to climb 1 
What Evening not Rest's angel with sweet reasons I 



LXVIII. 

On this young day old Time thrice question I : 
First this — Why Time hath brought me here to be? 
Anon the answer very plain 1 see — 
To do my lowly prodigies and die. 
Next, this I ask of Time — The reason why 
He bringeth me my loves that precious be; 
And find this answer ready — Love to me 
Opens life's prophecy before I die. 
Lastly I question — Why Time always taketh 
My thoughts to thoughts of God with every season? 
The deep Heart saith — Else all were mad and dim: 
The deep Heart saith that He forever maketh 
To "Stand by mightily": vision and reason, 
Deeds, loves and I and Time are one in Him. 



LXIX. 

I have remembered on this day a rhyme 
Of old: "Were Christ ten times in Bethlehem bom, 
And not in thee, thy case is still forlorn." 
'Tis faith's natural piety, plain and prime 
And pure. The holy and angelic chime 
Lovely saith this, that in a place of scorn, 
A stable crib, he came : so do adorn 
Souls simple his epiphany sublime. 
faithful Shepherd of the simple heart. 
This one leal way to love thee is most true : 
That now thy birth-place we avail to be. 
In living fealty 'tis all my part 
T' avouch not thou aforetime cam'st to view, 
But see thou have a manger now in me. 



LXX. 

There is a music in me iiid and covered, 
A most sweet music, though none other hear, 
A lovely music, as hid birds had hovered 
And fall their notes, to make nests of mine ear : 
And for this music, that it must be hid, 
This most sweet music that can not be uttered, 
This lovely music — it grows more, forbid. 
And doubleth tunes, as more birds thither fluttered : 
And for this music, that I wish to sing it, 
This most sweet music, of my love inspired. 
This lovely music — that same wish doth bring it 
New canticles, sweet songs of song desired. 

Beloved, thou art my music unexprest; 

Love's wishes hushed make music tenderest. 



LXXI 

No faculty makes everything his brother — 
Each hath a charter for his own possessions: 
One sense this pleaseth, that regales another — 
With his sole love each hath his happy sessions. 
To sight the armies of the stars surrender, 
And yet spend not the eye that kens their spaces; 
The hearing captive is to whispers tender, 
Yet trooping roars ear's vestibule embraces. 
So rise the balms, where the sweet herbage groweth, 
To subtle organ that to them pertaineth ; 
Flavors feed taste ; and hand in hand love knoweth 
His kin of love. Each sense his one bliss gaineth. 

But thou, heart's dear, that fill'st me all and whole, 

Dost travel every sense unto my soul. 



LXXII. 

Mind's images more than the body's senses 
Awake the spirit unto ken of bliss; 
Colors and flames and beams but seem pretences. 
Matched with the marvels of those shapes, I wis. 
I have beheld thee proud, like a grand queen, 
And I have known thee melt like snowy river; 
Thy patience like still graves I oft have seen. 
And thy deep crypts floods of thy love deliver; 
And by thy piety I sit me cheerful 
As low beside a spring in dusty ways. — 
Such things be recollections rainy-tearful 
Which patter songs on roofs of common days. 

So thou, heart's dear, that fill'st me all and whole, 
Dost travel every memory to my soul. 



LXXIII. 

Wherein most would I marry thee, beloved, 
Save in my straightened battles to be fought, 
When I am this way thrown and that way shoved 
In the fierce conflicts of encountered thought. 
On this wild battle-field I would thee wive 
And have thee for my fellow where I cope. 
Nor would without thee in the grapple strive. 
Nor fight uncertain, nor outvie in hope. 
When shall be won the fray, and changed the mood, 
And sweet reflections to reflections link, 
Then will I show thee how a wife is wooed, 
With all the quiet beauties I can think. 

Tis so, heart's own, who fill'st me all and whole, 
Thou travelest every thought unto my soul. 



LXXIV. 

I beseech thee, soul, learn to know the heroic. 
Mistake not : 'tis not flames of poetic fire 
Scattering sparks, e'en though these fly up higher 
Than air to be fixed stars ; nor is 't heroic 
To dare wounds — cowards do so; nay, nor heroic 
To be adventurous, unlawful, to tire 
The world's ear with fame of war, desire, 
Art, magnificence : these be not heroic. 
That love and truth are strength the hero believeth; 
Extremity endureth, yet not grieveth; 
And what his lot is, as from God receiveth. 
And this I see — the mighty Lord forsake th 
Wit. wealth and power — He made them; but He taketh 
The hero in ward the while himself he maketh. 



LXXV. 

Whate'er I am most strong, dear love, is thine; 
Eke In my weakness 1 to thee belong: 
For with my strength thy strength, love, doth combine, 
And to my weakness thy sweet pities throng. 
If in my mind I have a mightiness, 
And intellectual glories me beflame — 
If in my heart be all love's tenderness. 
And mastery, and eke his humble shame — 
And if my body's life mysterious rise 
To thee empowered — so am I thine complete: 
But if I faint or fail, thy loving eyes 
Burn to me straight a help-way for thy feet. 

If me or strong or weak thy love befall. 

Then I am thine by what I am in all. 

J 



LXXVI. 

O dear unknown to all the world but me, 
Whom eke I know not in thy sweetness all, 
How blessed lowly at thy feet to fall 
Adoring, yet made masterful by thee! 
For thou, my Queen, my queen wouldst never be 
Except o'er strength to queen, nor on aught small 
Amass thine empire, nor stoop to enthral 
What would not meet thee with a majesty. 
Albeit wooed, sole grandly canst be won: 
Then recompense more grand thou art, and rest 
More sweet than dreaming necromant suffuseth : 
1 fear with love, yet dare — else were undone; 
Then am I kingly throned in thy breast. 
And marked for mighty whom thy spirit chooseth. 



LXXVII. 

I ween noon deeps are seen like space night-skied. 
And night hath all the light of middle day. 
Where go assembling oceans by one way, 
The sandy frame of strand brims a sight-wide 
Expanse where billows dance of one bright tide. 
One blue unto my view in that one bay, 
But far asunder are where first they play 
And air and surges flare in one might-pride. 
Are not the morn, I wot, and evening streams 
That run straightway to one as water floweth, 
And do, though they be two, yet so commingle 
To be of thought one sea, one deep of dreams? 
'Tis so, and joyful lo ! my spirit knoweth 
Day's light and blue midnight are one and single. 



LXXVIII. 

I know not what my soul hates more and worse 
Than the pale brows of whimpering poets — they 
Who not e'en love but must go "faint," "fall," say 
"We sicken," "pine" and "die" in weeping verse. 
O fine-voiced harmonies, must ye rehearse 
These feeble folk, who swim or swamp in whey 
Like meagre curds, more thin than ghosts by day. 
Or evening scud that caps of wind disperse? 
What ! must sweet words, fine vocables, and song, 
That link all men and mark mankind, serve them 
Who suck a jaundice from th' inveterate green? 
Out wi' the pack ! I love bards firm and strong : 
My soul doth void the pulers — broods I 'd hem 
Like bats in rosy fogs, nor seeing nor seen. 



LXXIX. 

There be sights that ravish the eyes of memory: 
So when on them we look, we never think 
Of other things beheld, but all do sink 
From thought in that one vision's ecstasy. 
Such sight is Song. She cometh radiantly! 
Thought in her brow as light doth shine and sink: 
Her voice is golden chains of words, that link 
With various rhythm. Her tones transporting be! 
And in such state this tender queen converseth 
With me — tender and glorious eke, — and store 
Of saddening memories scatter in her smile. 
Pleasures I need not, and my grief disperseth, 
When cometh Song and saith. Thy heart is sore ; — 
But look on me; thou shalt be strong the while. 



LXXX. 

Thou hast in thee the nature and true being 
Of the elements, and minglest in my mind 
With each, enriching all. If I do find 
A light about me, come thou, and my seeing 
Is twice illumined. Or mute mass is freeing 
Music, Nature's or man's, that hath inclined 
My heart to peace and love — i' the sounds entwined, 
Thou art the tone that liveth, never fleeing. 
What fire or color, force or substance rare 
But, in thy gentle soul a region proving, 
Doth give to thee and from thee take a share ? 
So virtues of the elements do bring thee 
To me by voice or view, blest memory moving — 
To mind's eye kindle or to heart's ear sing thee. 



LXXXI. 

O my beloved, I pray thee show me thy mind! 
Thoughts are dense things. Let not one come between; 
I rather would a wall had builded been 
Betwixt us. than a thought that place should find. 
Heart o' me, what object lieth behind 
A masonry, though it cannot be seen, 
We can conceive, — its members all convene 
In image ; but to thoughts e'en thought is blind. 
O have no thought of thought I may not share, 
For then thou 'rt fled and hid in it, loved mine. 
While passioned unto oneness is my prayer : 
my soul's other, I do pray thee wear 
My spirit for the garmenting of thine, 
And with thee me enwrap, who else were bare. 



Lxxxir. 

There shine the heavens, th' Imperial of blue ; 
There gleams a speck, a woven glint of red : 
The blue is luminous, pervading, shed 
Endless : the red a raiment, with its hue 
Clothing a little maid. With marveled view 
To scan the red against the blue o'erhead, 
To mark the child against all Nature spread 
Around her, seemeth miracles to do. 
No limit, when I leap to that blue space ; 
And 'tis infinity when with my soul 
I look upon the red-clad, small and mild. 
God! What know I? Where hide my face? — 
While round the red the blue doth settle and roll. 
And the Lord's love bums around the child. 



LXXXIII. 

Unutterable tyrant, whose legs stride their span 
On necks of knouted women, 'tis base-bom chatter 
That if you heal your realm, nobles that flatter 
Will rend you then. Is 't so? Well, play the man. 
You shall have friends. But now your foes in clan 
Are groans, cries, curses, tears — whirlwinds that scatter. 
Tyrant by choice or cowardice — what matter? 
Shunned of all hearts that camp in freedom's van. 
What! Treaty with you? To make the flood 
Of salt, clean seas and these our shores no bounds 
To your ill clutch ? Away, in honor's name ! — 
Lest our soil quake and speak, and young men's blood 
That blushed so late on all our battle grounds 
For liberty, blush there once more for shame. 



LXXXIV. 

" Fallacia alia aliam trudit" — nay 
For pity, gentle poet, say not so : 
One sweet Fallacia for the world I trow 
Is quite enough; no crops of them, 1 pray. 
If one Fallacia bloom beside the way. 
Must then a new Fallacia forthwith blow. 
And that same stem a third Fallacia show 
From the second budded? Alack, alack the day! 
Have mercy, Bard ; withhold such deluges ; 
Belike we need a discipline, but try 
Softer inventions and a stripe less sore : 
Or save us some allotted refuges, 
If only crags, where shall not multiply 
Fallacias upon those Alpines frore. 



LXXXV. 

I famish for a Sonnet ; pray, why not ? 
Nay, curl not, pretty poet, reproving lip: 
If body o' me may pine to earn a scrip 
Of athlete grace, so may the mind, I wot. 
And if my frame a suppleness hath got 
By choice of feat it likes, as or to strip 
For manly tug, or riding, or to dip 
In the sea with buffets, hath soul less royal lot ? 
Ah marvel! while I argue, song hath crept 
Into my heart, and fills with music blest 
Reverberant voids, my empty melancholy. 
Go then, thou mystic thing, Sonnet yclept; 
Me thou hast fed ; away to the true breast 
Of some dear friend, and please him with my folly. 



LXXXVI. 

Juno, Olympian Queen, to Iris said, 
■" Dispatch ye now the circling world to scan ; 
Find me three maids so cold and nunnery-bred 
Their bosoms have not brooked one thought of man." 
Down on his opal wings of changing hue 
Dropped Iris; but he sought the maids in vain, 
All corners rummaging ; then up he flew 
And stood before the spouse of Jove again, 
"What! Not found one?" quoth Juno with knit brow. 
" Have patience, Queen of Heaven, I heard of three ; 
But Pluto seized them first and has them now." 
"What! Pluto? Pluto hunting prudes?" quoth she; 
•'And pray for what? Are they Tartarean houris?" 
"He wished them, Madam," Iris said, "for furies." 



LXXXVII. 

Combined Erinyes, fierce flaxen prude, 
Pale-eyed unbashful brow, ambitious dame, 
Skilful to void your skirts of gossip blame. 
But liberal-heedless of your inward rude, 
Beshrew me but I blush that have been brewed 
Some discords in me round your slender name ; 
For I should do full credit to your fame 
If I forgot you ever did Intrude 
Like smoke 'twixt me and sight. Your amity 
I 've felt, its velvet foot — and claws that cling 
In its webs, thence shooting out to mar and mangle. 
Go, pretty brinded one, pass by, 1 pry thee : 
I yield wide room. Prowl natively, and spring 
Where fellow rhus and nightshade round you tangle. 



LXXXVIII. 

Ye are a portrait gallery, my books, 
Of my brave line, and from your leathern frames, 
Leathern and golden, lettered with your names. 
Ye gaze down at me with old courtly looks. 
To know you is not easy. Silent nooks 
Of thought become him who from pages aims 
To explore your souls; — he needs fine sense who claims 
To taste the highland snow in midland brooks. 
And yet there is a mystical fine skill 
Of blood that searcheth with divining sight 
These rich memorials, — cloisters of your souls. 
Is it a kinsman's delicate sweet thrill 
Acquaints me with you? Yes; but up your height 
Not my pretension but my worship rolls. 



LXXXIX. 

Beloved, like to a flame thou art, that burneth 
In the most holy inward of a dwelling, 
Where once if lit 'tis ne'er unlit, there quelling 
Every rough scape in who with it sojourneth. 
When from a raving world my mind returneth 
To sane loneness, I seek that inward, telling 
With softened voice I come, my gloom expelling; 
And instantly warm light my soul discerneth. 
For in the most closed crypt of me, heart's dearest. 
The flame that is thyself enkindles holy. 
As on an altar an unwaning fire ; 
And the diffusion of it is most clearest 
Love and sweet peace, and love's most reverent lowly 
Domestic soul and home-fulfilled desire. 



xc. 

I do entreat thee, dear, this night to make 
Remindful image of me in thy heart 
Before thou sleepest, so with tender art 
To have me with thee for my true love's sake. 
If so, heart's own, thou wilt memorial take 
Of me to verge of sleep, 'twill not depart, 
Nor at thy port of visions from thee start. 
Nor from thy mystic hold of me will break. 
By this, thou shalt be taught, dear love, if true 
Thou mak'st mine image, that it will not go, 
Nor flee with light thy now resigned eyes; 
But I will stay, and in thy slumber woo 
So reverent of thee thou shalt never know 
Whether morn's kiss or mine thy soul surprise. 



XCI. 

Thou art my heart's voyage of discovery 
And regions new; for till I was thy lover 
I knew not of myself; beneath the cover 
Of unproved life I lay full piteously. 
Then freed, self-known, I burst captivity, 
Lifted me, loved thee, and did by thee hover 
As doth upon a shore the rainy plover 
And maketh there his home with constancy. 
Thence I into myself with heart intense, 
Half fear, more joy, all marvel, did explore 
The realms of me, for love's most leal behoof. 
Going at cost of love, by this expense 
I do discover love, to love thee more 
Who hast of love and life put me to proof. 



XCII. 

R. F. B. 

Though I no coffer have with gold galore, 

Nor wherewithal to buy thee what I would, 

Beloved girl, yet I will give thee more 

Than wallet's wealth to gild this season good. 

My heart is such a locker as doth hold 

Two richer stores than heaps of jewels be ; 

They are my loves ; one doth the world enfold ; 

The other, my most dearest few and thee. 

Heart, without hand, unlocked, unknown may stay; 

Hand without heart a thrifty purse can spend ; 

But if hand write the heart, together they 

Can open thee a love without an end. 

Dear, pray thee so my hand-writ heart-verse take 
Appraise it with two values, for love's sake. 



XCIII. 

R. D. B. 

Silver and gold I have none, darling girl, 
But what I have I give thee ; 'tis my verse. 
Twice dear it is, and therefore more than pearl. 
Ruby or jewel bright that 's bought with purse. 
For if to give thee I could something buy, 
It were but mine and dear by my expense; 
E'en if I sought it with exploring eye, 
'Twere still but mine, and dear in single sense. 
But now twice dear my offering is shown, — 
In compass small, in value double-great ; 
The lapidary I, but thine the stone. 
For which I plunder in me thine estate. 
So doth my versing richly render thee 
Thine own dear sweetness erst bestowed on me. 



XCIV. 

S. H. M. 

In full a man ! Mine eyes behold a light 
That is a man, and darkness maketh end! 
Relucent atmospheres fall from thee, friend, 
T' inhabit where hath passed thy master-might : 
Thy chisel moves, and lo ! a man outright 
Living ; nor wondrous so, since Art doth send 
A man in thee to carve a man, and blend 
With whom thou makest leap from stone to sight. 
Thy soul carves Titans ; the hand but haltingly 
Can wring the clay to thy soul's imagery. 
Yet cutteth grandly: eke full provedly 
Plain speech and manly verse attend on thee : 
Glory would crown thy head, but can not see 
If man's, friend's, sculptor's, bard's, thy fame should be. 



xcv. 

H. H. B. 

Sometimes they ask who is my favorite bard, 
What poet nearest my heart. Then do I say, 
My loveliest minstrels write no measures ; they 
Are verse themselves, which most I do regard. 
'Tis writ, "True unfeigned verse is very hard:" 
Thou art unfeigned; and delicate as day 
At dawn, or love, or truth, thy quiet way 
Poetic, Do then impediments retard ? 
No ! natural as th' atmosphere of hills 
Thy spirit pours from thy far inward height 
Of life and love. Thy ignorance of pelf, 
Thy limner art, thy music when thy breathing fills 
The reed, thy sweet wife, home, and the marvel of light 
Of thy face mid all, these poems be thyself. 



XCVI. 

H. H. B. 

If In the sky the orb magnificent 
All suddenly more glorious should burn. 
And round on such a blazing axle turn 
That all the heavens with new sparks were sprent, 
Should not we think celestial lockers rent 
To deal a fuel to the fiery urn 
O' the concave sun, and deem we did discern 
A flame fed with some heavenly element? 
So thought I, noble friend, when I did look, 
Beholding suddenly more glorious shine 
The manly beauty of thy countenance : 
For once, twice, thrice as many meetings took 
My love by surprise: then, "Sure," I did opine, 
" New heavenly fuel feeds this radiance." 



XCVII. 

H. H. B. 

I saw a kindled brand of young fresh wood 
Fledged with its foliage still; and a drear smoke 
Fled from the faggots, like a bad ghost woke 
From an enchantment, 'scaping while it could. 
I saw another, wherein gnarled branches stood, 
Heaped ugly, dry; but naught there was to choke 
The ruddy flame, the golden blaze, that broke 
As from rude body a freed spirit good. 
So when I saw the light within thy face. 
Where was no mixture of a smoky ire, 
But all was bright and beautiful and clear, 
1 said, " There is no stained and sooty trace 
Of smudge of floral foliage in this fire; 
Tis disciplined and seasoned things bum here." 



XCVIII. 

» 
L. B. M. 

If I could ennoble my name for thee, baby boy, 
Then it were mine in overflowing measure. 
Giving it thee withal, of princely joy; 
But now, poor name ! 'tis like uncounted treasure. 
That counted proves small. Belike, my child. 
Thou wilt return it me visaged with fame; 
And 1, from whom but now thou seemest styled, 
Anon from thy repute shall hold my name. 
But though I cannot give thee honor, dear, 
Thou dear, dear child, nor I can raise me 
To make my name a crown, this shall be clear. 
That for plain honesty thy soul can praise me. 

As innocence thy name doth mix with mine. 

So may I render proved age to thine. 



XCIX. 

O. F. H. 

Master, here be thy hands, most holy skill 
In them harmonious moved. Where be the keys 
Unlocking sluices for the prisoned seas 
Of worshiping sound forth-swelling at thy will? 
Liveth the being of that grand organ still 
That did requite thy love, leaping to please 
Thy soul with all his voice, or like in trees 
With whispers of soft winds the tops that fill? 
If perish that mighty music, better fire 
Did sublimate it to th' immaculate air 
Where pageantries nor use unhallowed go. 
Magnificent House of Sound! With what desire 
Its harmonies pierced heaven, and being there, 
Called up to them our souls that were below. 



O House of Praise within our House of Praise, 
Glorious dwelling of voices, Bethlehem 
Of faith's plenty, which did by ear condemn 
Our heavy spirits that no sound did raise! 
It poured far in, like ocean by its bays: 
Impediment of thankless hearts could stem 
No whit its heavenly inundation, which them 
Lifted like deluges by mountain ways. 
It seemed like all of Nature packed in voice: 
The far and near, great, small, mighty and tender, 
The roar of winds and waves, the thunder's roll. 
Warbles in tree-tops where the birds rejoice, 
Brooks that to rivers, they to seas, surrender — 
These were its convocation for the soul. 



CI, 



Its majesty was like as sorcerer's rite 
Immured a soul in the grand instrument: 
A vengeance was the necromancer's bent, 
But could abase not soul to worser plight. 
Its stature seemed a bodily grand might. 
Conformed to spiritual powers that blent 
With manifold voice more gloried than e'er lent 
Sweet volumes to a throat since primal light. 
Inhabited as with a soul it spake, 
And more than with a voice, being so o'erfilled 
With Nature's roars and greater human tone: 
Until with double life o'erpressed it brake. 
With thousand voices for one soul was killed. 
And to kin fire submiss, dissolved alone. 



CII 



Thou mind'st me, dear friend, of one pervading hue: 
Like to the sea thou art, whose wave is pied 
Of phosphor fishes, gray and gay clouds, and ride 
Of misty foam; but under is all one blue. 
And thou art like the sky, that doth subdue 
Itself, like lovers, to what it owns, — the wide 
Crimson of morn, eve's opal, pearly or plied 
With brinded vapors; but over is all one blue. 
Like these thy one apparel, varied seeming: 
Thou hast thine art, — fair forms with colors limnest, — 
And science eke ; but most is this, thou 'rt true. 
Sweet Poesy thou lov 'st, and Nature beaming, 
And thoughts devout that constantly thou hymnest, 
And tender dreams ; but most, thou all art true. 



cm. 

C. H. M. 

My friend all leal, all loved, my fancies find, 
Like frolic pixies, boskage of retreat 
In thickets of thy smiles, nor whim discrete 
But meets his mate in thy most nimble mind. 
If verse be unto graver form inclined, 
Still thou art fellow, awed with thought, thy feet 
Reverent at shrines, instant at sorrows, fleet 
For love : like Nature, veined, like colleague, kind. 
But I know well thy quips: thou 'rt not content 
Without thy quaint demurs twixt grave and gay: 
I 've even seen thee jeer at sonnetry. 
But 'ware thee, lest sudden thou be y-shent 
Wi' my rude wrath. No ? We Ml wrangle that. I pray, 
Imprimis, now, discourse thy bravery. 



CIV. 

M. p. 

Words halt after thee! They are but lame 
And lagging followers of thy most flying mind. 
Thou leap'st twixt thoughts, like feet wonted to find 
Stepping-stones swifter than bridge's vaulting frame. 
But like one thus that flies, yet leaves his name 
And "s journey's end, thy fine intent is signed 
In thy dipt parley, and 'tis an eye but blind 
That catcheth not thy targe from th' arrow's aim. 
O, 1 snare thy tossed words like a bird's notes flying. 
Completing thy melodies in one charmed ear 
The while with other I keep thee in my ken. 
Friend, fellow student, blest be the leisures when 
Thy humors one another chase I hear, 
Like second echoes while the first are dying! 



cv. 

M L. P. 

A hallowed thought of Sweden's mystical sage, 
— Thought holy-strange, dipt in Creation's prime — 
That we in Heaven grow young, not old, and Time 
Then traveleth backward with us in our age ! 
Bright Seer, thou hast but told the half! Youth's rage 
Grows yet on earth to peace more young; if clime 
Of natural cooling years congeal a rime. 
To melt it do unaging loves engage. 
Witness the nobler men of all the earth, 
Who daily grow more young, remote from death, 
And from Death's foragers, the years, in sooth : 
And witness, Venerable Friend, thy daily birth 
Each morn accomplished with more vital breath, 
To show — not waiting Heaven — that soul is youth. 



CVI. 

S. S. AND J. W. S. 

"To gild refined gold" the poet saith 

Is art Impossible or folly bold. 

Ah! yet two things there be whereof each hath 

The power to gild the other, both being gold. 

Time ever has been golden called, and sure 

An hour, a moment, may buy heaven for earth ; 

Yet Love engildeth Time with gold as pure 

As Time itself is golden in its worth. 

And eke is Love's most golden value told, 

Precious, celestial Love, and golden Love; 

Yet Time as richly gildeth Love of old 

As Love is golden and all price above. 

Come Love, come Time, who these dear hearts enfold. 
Now beam on them with more than double gold. 



evil. 

ST. MATILDA. 

Thou reverently loved, belovedly revered, 
'Twas church most catholic thee did canonize 
By Theodore, great priest, who knew, being wise, 
Thy station perfected, august, endeared. 
0, who is like thee, who so to be feared 
In love, and loved with a fine fear! Yet eyes 
Most meek dost carry, 'neath brow where sits surmise 
Betwixt two worlds, seeing both about thee sphered. 
Thou mind'st me o' the grand Beethoven in that space 
Where Theodore preached "the word," and thou below 
Didst listen rapt, he "so believed in God." 
That mighty statue is thyself in face, — 
But thou art delicate, air-made, as God would show 
With how scant earth he might send souls abroad. 



CVIII. 

L. E. H. 

Years set in memory, as the day in night ; 
And as the day continueth in dreams 
With sweet pursuant pleasures, so meseems 
The set years still diffuse prevailing light. 
As over dark gaps of sky a star-ray bright 
Filters into my visions, eke do beams 
Of many a stately deed or love that gleams 
From the mid heavens of memory, undimmed quite. 
So in my firmament a double star 
Thou 'rt lucent ; first, sole in thyself ; for thou 
Art glorious, noble, precious, beautiful: 
And once, at a sad ruin, thy spirit far 
Bent down and gave me a queen's kiss. My brow 
Is prouder since, my step more masterful. 



CIX. 

M. E. A. 

Brave and sweet spirit that first gav'st me sense 
Of reverential vigil set around nne, 
On every side thy watch and ward did bound me, 
Planting twixt me and cares a flowery fence. 
Thy helps have dropped about me, as dispense 
The heavens their heavens of rain ; ever did sound me 
In ear thy sweet prevailment ; need that found me 
Thy heart did first resolve, then gave me thence. 
So was my work no longer mine, but ours; 
And they who knew not thy strength tugged amain, 
Wondered that 1 such weight lifted and toss'd. 
O friend, true counselor, thy mind empowers, 
Thy heart convinces still 1 Gone — but all 's gain 
Thou leavest here ; once had, never thou 'rt lost. 



ex 

E. G. W. 

With what a wondrous sweet sanity thou lookest 
From calm Friend eyes, like lights in citadels 
Of peace on walls of war, or like sweet wells. 
As if for pilgrims' thirst forethought thou tookest. 
With what soft reasonable lull thou brookest 
No noise near thee ; but like a voice in dells 
Where Silence listens pleased, thy tones are spells, 
As if e'en music's clamor thou forsookest. 
All health is still. The hush of thy true mind 
Is like assurance, that needs not be loud ; 
Reason is quiet, and thou his handmaid so. 
Rare symmetry! As sky of stars confined 
To one round welkin, that doth sphere the crowd. 
So is whole mind; and such in thee doth show. 



CXI. 

C. M. C. 

A wilderness of memories, lovely friend. 
Draws me to olive alcoves for a rill 
Of song to thee ; whereinto then do spill 
Mine eyes' own drops, under the shadows' bend. 
There will I listen for a hymn to blend 
With the dear pride thy lovers own, to fill 
Their love with truthful music, sweeter still 
If as from thee In them the music end. 
Yet more I long to tell my one and own. 
My one own solitude, which thou didst give 
Me in thy love, and fill with radiance white. 
But most I seek my verse with thee alone 
Still to be filled: O, thou dost live. 
And I sit yet within thine arc of light. 



CXII. 

G. Af . C. 

Over the picture of her there had been 
A dimness formed; opening the framing thence 
To brush it off, I found a friend, far hence, 
Had penciled these lines and left them there unseen: 
"Cloudless forever is her brow serene, 
Speaking calm hope and trust within her, whence 
Welleth a noiseless spring of patience 
That keepeth all her life so fresh, so green. 
And full of holiness." I wished 'twas I 
Had writ and hid the lines ; yet instant said. 
What matter who? My heart doth sing its own. 
Dear, brave and lovely friend, thou 'rt like a sky, 
Two lights wherefrom, both day's and night's, are shed. 
And howsoe'er remote, 'tis never gone. 



CXIII. 

E B, B. 

Thou little lad that now unconsciously 
Art given my name, what wilt thou think far hence, 
Or feel, when thou shalt wake to ask them whence 
They took the name to fasten it on thee? 
Wilt thou not ask, Owe I a fealty 
For 's name? What did he, or what said, that thence 
On me ye buckled his name? Was 't for defense 
Or weapon — a shield, or else a sword, for me? 
Yet ask not so. The mighty Milton saith, 
"Fall'n Cherub, to be weak is miserable:" 
Ay, "fall'n;" but thou unfall'n art weak, yet blest. 
Thou shalt be strong. Then ask with thy deep breath 
Not fame of me. but virtue venerable: 
My little lad, I owe thee this, the best. 



CXIV. 

L. L. W. 

friend of my true soul, sister and friend 
Of years long past, but yet unspent, thy light, 
Though thou hast died, is a mom of vanished night; 
Thy voice, like dawn's sweet rustle, hath no end 
On earth. Dearly doth my heart attend 
The summons thine own hand did me indite: 
I have thy loving scrip, bidding me write 
In plain, true verse what unversed I had penned. 
** Do it for me," sayst thou; "it is a thought 
I fain would relish versed. To music it. 
So be by me thy mind's Bethesda troubled." 
Thou wert a heaven, by death to heaven upcaught: 
Thence as erst here, thy voice doth on me sit. 
And I am bidden from a heaven doubled: — 



cxv. 

To what 's changeable, Death is colleague loving and warnn ; 
All grow but in degrees, since creatures be 
Imperfect and, how suave soe'er we see 
The pretty things, do lack their righteous norm. 
Death is no fellow of perfectness. The storm 
May ply all havoc, destruction be set free — 
What change needeth the finished thing to flee 
Or fear? Death hath no office to perform. 
Therefore, kind Death, thou art the superscript 
Of the incomplete, on their foreheads written. 
Like water, now ice, but charactered to flow. 
Thou signifiest that things unfinished, stript 
For a new race unto perfectness, fiery smitten. 
Now to a new degree do onward go. 



CXVI 

M. H. W. 

Devotion is thy soul, beloved friend, 
Commingled with a wit so wise and bright, 
The wit with learning's robe richly bedight. 
That how to love thee best I see no end. 
Meseems sometimes 'tis heart doth most outsend 
Thy witty blaze ; anon methinks thy might 
Is in thy wit, to which thy love a light 
Of effluency soft and sweet doth lend. 
Yet whether wit be fired by love, to glow. 
Or love be shone upon by wit, to gleam. 
What matter? 'Tis one thing. And thou art so. 
I am no prism to thy lights; all seem 
r the altitude of love as one to show. 
Like to a star's unseparable beam. 



CXVII. 

Af. E. P. 

On thine own mind shine inward! Show not dark 
Sole to thyself, who shinest so to me. 
Thy feathered shafts of light should have a mark 
In thine own heart. I 'd shoot them back to thee. 
Oft when I view thy soul, my wonder stark 
Ariseth thus: Whether the sun I see, 
That in sky burneth, unto itself an ark 
Of Erebus and consort Night can be? 
Pure griefs are refuges, not glooms that cark 
The spirit; 0, then from out them lucently 
Blaze on thyself — and me. Doth not the lark 
Partake the song he scatters airily? 

Thou givest sweet light, for so mine eyes confess; 

let thy light thyself more dearly bless. 



CXVIII. 

K. L. H. 

What if two suns should travel in the sky 
On one same day; or if two moons should gild 
One night; or if two wests one eve had stilled; 
Or two easts blushed that one dear day drew nigh! 
What if two domes of heaven spanned equal high 
One floor of earth; or if two seas had filled 
One coast; or one same base two mountains hilled; 
Or might two atmospheres around them lie! 
These sure were heavenly marvels. Would not noise 
Of joyful praises to the twin worlds turn, 
And litanies intone them to the soul? 
Such is thy grace, brave mother; by thy boys 
Two moons and suns in one thou makest burn. 
Two worlds for them around one axle roll. 



CXIX. 

A. L. T. 

What long understandings lie mediate of content 
For us, dear friend, and how full sweet they be ; 
Silence is like a space, where fogs are free, 
But thy star-heart is there when clouds be spent. 
Thy constancy impassioned gleameth blent 
In equal height with th' one star heavenly 
"Of whose true-fixed and resting quality 
There is no fellow in the firmament." 
Methinks souls that be fixed in love as thine, 
Have in unmutable spirit prodigal pleasures, 
As oaks fly leaves, but in their roots do live : 
And of thy heart I know by answer of mine 
That thou impartest of thy steadfast measures, 
And to thy lovers still to love dost give. 



cxx. 

Dear being, my love 's alive to thee, thou lookest 
So sorry. In all my life I never met 
An eye more humbly wistful, nor brow beset 
With more of patient pain. Insult thou brookest 
In plenty; blows, harsh voices, sneers thou tookest 
Yestreen, nor thinkest other things to get 
This sunny noon. Thou art too sore to fret, — 
As thou like a sad nun the world forsookest 
Heartbroken. If I did give thee but a nod. 
Thy starving heart would leap, thou 'Idst come, and think 
A bone riches, chill corners luxury. 
Tis strange and sad how little thou ask'st of God. 
Or of the world; yet wander till thou sink, 
Thou find'st that little nowhere left for thee. 



CXXI. 

Why give I not the nod would make thee leap 
And thy heart throb, eyes glow and body all 
Tremble with foreign promise? To some befall 
Such fortune as on thee my beck would heap. 
Poor friend, sad distance grade by grade doth creep 
'Twixt us, both poor ; eke now my sole lone stall 
Shelters a stray o' thy kind, whom I did call 
From street for pity, for pity and love do keep. 
If I could give thee, sad, unspeaking one. 
A meed of rescue, better than compassion, 
What could I with yon next awaiting me? 
Turn off thine eyes from me, that look be done. 
That I may go. I shrive me in this fashion — 
Thou canst forget me, as I cannot thee. 



CXXII. 

Peace. Go thy way. Good slave, thou hast done well! 
Poor hack, how thou didst toil and strain at cart, 
While none bethought him yet what was thy heart. 
Or whether thou hadst pains who couldst not tell. 
Thou wert a merchandise to buy and sell ; 
Yet virtue thine that did e'en now depart 
Could not be sold. Where is 't, the thing thou art ? 
Still can ghosts drive thee, shades of whips compel? 
Good soul, good bye I The world were brave and bright 
If every man did earn his living so, 
And give as much for more as thou for less. 
Thy service ends not with thy body's night: 
Men thou didst carry here where they would go; 
Now me transportest with sad thoughts that bless. 



CXXIII. 

F. L. H. ^ 

Thou gentle spirit, eke who art my friend, 

Thy soul hath such communicative grace 
That if thou sing, or if thou fill a space 
With critic frowns, the heart is still thine end. 
As sweet as dew is wit that knows to blend 
The lights of song and censure in one face, — 
Like thrifty Nature that through one self place 
The starry and the stormy fires doth send. 
If I do halt, or if I fall behind 
Thy sunny feet, if seem thy reasons told 
Sadly in vain, and wasted over me — 
I dare not yield thee over much my mind. 
Lest, rougher me subduing to thy mold, 
I lose myself and yet attain not thee. 



CXXIV. 

M. T. W. 

Thy gentle quiet moves me reverently! 
Thy love is large, v^hence I thy patience see; 
For sole the heart fills full the piety 
Of being still that 's still where fervors be. 
I love a soul whose passionate mastery, 
Like a brave giant, strong but gentle, free 
Like tides and like them tethered, mightily 
How love's deep sea can move reveals to me. 
Liberal of peace thou art, but unafraid. 
And all thy gentle actions are as laid 
Upon an altar where a fire doth glow: 
And the fed flames look back on thee displayed 
In their kin light, and round thee do pervade. 
And thy most passionate deep of quiet show. 



cxxv. 

E, H. R. 

"Thy hand, kind friend," said I, "we have not greeted 
Each other to-night since hither in we came." 
"Why yes," saith she. "Why no," quoth I. Still she 

entreated. 
And through the lamp-light smiled like as its flame 
The dark pervaded when the lamp was lighted. 
Lodged in that glow 1 could not darkly think: 
Else had I thought that I belike had slighted 
Other such smile as now my soul did drink. 
But while I puzzled over her intent. 
She spoke again — the smile to music set — 
And "Nay and nay," said she, "our spirits sent 
Winged issues from them ere our hands were met. 
Kind greetings are heart's children, naked born: 
Words but the garments waiting to be worn," 



CXXVI. 
F. c. w. 
Thou mad'st a valiant fight, my dear brave boy, 
To hold thy soul down loyally to earth; 
And eke, aspiring unto service-worth, 
Thy wishes were devout, simple thy joy. 
And what ? because thy soul could not convoy 
Thy body's freight, can thought, faith, love and mirth 
That flamed in thee be lifeless? No, but thy birth 
Into a grace this world could not employ. 
Thou art to me like one who writ a scroll 
And filled it with brave visions and dear dreams. 
And memories set to music sweet and strong. 
For life, since worth thy battle, gentle soul. 
Seems greater grown, and love the dearer seems ; 
And days like thine devout, though few. are long. 



CXXVII. 

F. A. W. 

"0 Insupportable and touching loss I" 
So Brutus' friend condoled for Brutus' wife: 
So we. for him too early plunged in life 
Too deep for mortal eyes, bewail our cross. 
Two households with one heart he did enguard; 
But, like th' asphaltic fruits to ashes turned. 
The virtues in his life that shone and burned 
Now seem our woes, making our loss too hard. 
What then ? If we might pray, and then were furled 
God's scroll of will, and those sweet virtues dear 
Made but a little less, to keep him here. 
Then would we pray that prayer? Not for the world I 
Arise 1 with thanks for prayers, that but from earth 
We him shall spare, never from heart his worth. 



CXXVIII. 

I have been counting ye, my precious few. 
My hearers and my readers, lovers dear : 
How well the world would roll, and briefly here 
A petty number know, slipped I from view. 
'Tis reason I should love ye more, and do ; 
But not doth cry this reason In your ear 
To love me more ; for I no more appear 
Than one in many ; my very all are you. 
Strange ye do love me so, with souls that burn 
To read what I have writ, hear what 1 sing. 
When all the world beside reckon me naught. 
But ye are right for all; 'tis lovers learn 
Where beauty slumbers veiled. And I do bring 
Ye love mates yours — 'tis so my song is wrought! 



CXXIX. 

my most precious friends, ye do bestow 
On me the immortality of love, 
And in your hearts, that still on earth are low, 
Ye march me to the front of heaven above. 
I will requite ye with mine own sad heart; 
And for that it be poorer than your due, 
I will requite ye with my lovely art. 
And In my verse make ye immortal too. 
Still I your debtor am; for your love sole 
Is richer than my love and verse combined: 
But thus I shun default, that I enroll 
Ye where in countless hearts ye will be shrined. 
Here ye are writ in Time's remembered page, 
Till Time himself default of very age. 



cxxx. 

To whom I would give all, so little can, 
Thee, O most lovely spirit, I endow 
With all my poverty's rich valor now. 
Blest wishes — poor man's plenty. Fortune ran 
Fleet-foot to catch me for thee in the van 
Of my heart's boast. For I had told thee how. 
If so plant blessedness upon thy brow, 
I would submit me glad to any ban. 
'Tis now required of me, and reason shows. 
Like a pale white across my golden sun, 
That I must lose thee for thy dear behoof. 
To heart a-deep this reason bringeth woes: 
Yet happy I. It Is not every one 
Boasting his love who so is put to proof. 



CXXXI. 

Most dearest love, to me thy mighty gift 
Is my brave power now to live without thee : 
I had more need of thee if less thy lift 
Of me above complaint by grace from out thee. 
Wert thou less perfect, I more mightily 
Had outward clung, as inwardly at heart; 
But being inward fed so perfectly, 
Thou see'st me live while I see thee depart. 
My life is strain — I can outstrain the strain; 
My heart is wrung, but I can say. Be wrung; 
Ambition 's vain, but 'tis but vain thing vain; 
And love that clung hath now more tightly clung. 
So thy blest perfectness that made me love, 
Lifteth me now love's very self above. 



CXXXII. 

1 had a bird confined in a cage, 
And of that bird was merry all day long, — 
So beautiful the lustres of her song, 
Whereof her plumage seemed the heritage. 
And soon my ready heart she did engage 
Unto a gentle loving sweet and long, 
Which then at last impassioned grew and strong. 
And lifted me above a mortal gauge. 
Then gazed I on my precious bird full sadly; 
For loving now, I heard that love-song rare 
With understanding, from bars gold and gay. 
I kissed her, bosomed her, but spoke her gladly ; 
In hand I took and tossed her in the air. 
With heart-break willing when she flew away. 



CXXXIII. 

Thou hearest? — "The King is dead ! Long live the King ! " 
Thou hearest not? Why, all the world is full 
Of proclamation, that as snow like wool 
Covers the land with joined frost and spring. 
Up hands, pluck rosemary and rue, and bring 
The asphodel, and boughs of bay-tree pull! 
His name was Heart the First, and masterful 
In our royal house. And he is dead, my King! 
But now, breath on stopped breath, comes Heart the Second, 
And I, of royal line, no more must weep 
My dead first Heart, but coronation ring: 
He hath brave duties by the great world reckoned. 
And I must follow where he leads, and keep 
Close to his fresh valor. Long live the King! 



CXXXIV. 

"Had I but half-loved, then 1 might complain 
Parting were murdered possibility!" 
I know not who thou art unfamedly 
Who singeth this resolved and faithful strain; 
But I do thank thee! Thou dost show how vain 
Bereaving grief and disappointment be 
Against a love that loveth perfectly, 
Accounting "dear expense" a dearer gain. 
O love, my love, my heart is grand by thee : 
And so, being come to love's most high degree, 
Can live parted — since, loved one, unto me 
Love hath been whole in sweet extremity. 
Yet every hour I loved more mightily; 
Belike so love will grow by memory. 



cxxxv. 

Of one sweet thing I have been foiled in life. 
Averting dear communicable bliss: 
0, I have joys galore, yet to lack this, 
Which hath passed by me, makes in me a strife 
At some sore times. There be cuts made with knife, 
Fierce and quick o'er; one carves me long, I wis, 
And hath an edge the while that what I miss 
Hisses to me, like hates in whispers rife. 
But I two things have harbored for my cure: 
Here 's one — that the full world in plenty holds 
Blest men who in this joy denied me live. 
Whereat rejoicing, this I have, like sure. 
And equal joy thereby my heart enfolds, — 
That I this thing have given — and will give. 



CXXXVI. 

I see it like a lovely silver haze 
Broidered on morning blue; and I remember 
Yestreen enlightened me its golden gaze 
That now is pale as ash on outburnt ember. 
Methinks for love of love that blest us twain 
It beamed a night-full of its lustre mellow, 
And then for woe that we do part did wane, 
Till now it is so white that was so yellow. 
For ours, O love, meseems was such a tying 
As moon and stars and sun might hang upon: 
Almost I wonder that the earth with vying 
Of such a breaking doth not crack anon. 
But now the moon, silver or gold, I know 
Hath lessened not; no more doth love die so. 



CXXXVII. 

Thou bldst me sing a sonnet of pure thought: 
Not 'lone thy voice preceptive, but thy soul 
Dwelling in me ; for intellectual roll 
The tides of love that shore in thee have sought. 
My love is like an ocean roused and brought 
To passion by a glorious gale's control; 
Yet bearing up the floatage to the goal 
Of vessels of conception richly fraught. 
And for these vessels that they come to shore. 
I will unload one now into my verse, 
To offer thee, dear love, its foreign wealth : 
Foreign, for that it is a goodly lore, 
Yet is not love, and will not love rehearse; 
Yet, offered thee, 'tis love's most happy health: 



CXXXVIII. 

I should know well that many a time and over 
I trample on the face of heavenly dooms; 
Yet this I know not ; but amid the glooms 
Of my dull folly plod, a daftie rover. 
I huddle precious things like yokel drover 
That markets lambs through lanes of flowery plumes, 
Missing the modesties where lily blooms, 
And crests of perfumes on mead-seas of clover. 
'Tis mournful to smell flowers with swinish snout. 
Sniffing the lovely beings for provender. 
The while they fling their fragrances about: 
Divine to know the divine, so to confer 
With God in his least things by heart devout. 
And solemnize each heavenly messenger. 



CXXXIX. 

Now I have writ the sonnet of sole thought — 
Art satisfied? Wilt give me thy sweet praise? 
Art wild or weary in these latter days 
With my most wooing verse that should be naught? 
Thou hast two beauties, dight wherewith and fraught 
To think or see thee, all my loving pays: 
Leave thou these beauties, or conceal their rays, 
Perforce I cease to woo thee — as I ought. 
But this thou canst not do, dear spirit rare: 
One beauty is of color, form and look, 
And one thine angel loveliness of soul: 
Thou canst ungarment neither; yet if less fair 
Thy sweet face were, naught from thy soul were took 
Thence wooes my verse, and love will still control. 



CXL. 

Thou fill'st up all my memories, as wine 
Brows and o'ermounts the brim of crystal flask: 
What ray it traverses thence takes a mask 
O' the liquid glow, and, kindled so, doth shine. 
And thou didst fill up once my hopes. The fine 
Visions of youth had failed me in life's task; 
Thou didst revive them more than heart could ask. 
And all my dreams grew this one — to be thine. 
So thou undoest life, and tak'st away, 
Now thou dost go, the better half, my hope: 
But dear remembrance first thou didst endue 
With double light. Of thee 'tis such a ray. 
With memory sole I falter not nor grope. 
But walk as proudly as the hopeful do. 



CXLI. 

There be joys are not for me. Well, what of that? 
Tis fine to run as antelopes may run : 
But I 've no antlers. Bird's flight were zest well won: 
I am not feathered. I' the water: nor finned nor flat. 
But these not human are. Well, what of that? 
If sighs for wings, fins, antlers, were ill done. 
Must all of human love and pleasure sun 
The door-way and the vine where I have sat? 
Fleetfoot, that you can run 's enough for me ; 
And grayling, that you swim where waters fall ; 
And gentle dove, your flight I joy to see ; 
And lovers true, I watch you from the wall 
Of my lone cell, with joy that so ye be: 
This, if no more, my part — I love you all. 



CXLII. 

Whilom waked and warmed a gentle glowing 
At the heart o' me ; then ever clearer 
Burned in me, to deeps of me came nearer, 
Till it made me debtor of great owing. 
First by days and days it lived with growing; 
Soon the days were countless, and years dearer 
Thronged and spake — and I the blessed hearer 
Of the promise of a love ongoing 
Perfect, endless. ! 'twas life elysian 
Woke in me when with unweening movement 
Quickened love, to grow a passion holy. 
Now what can I? Barred is all my vision 
Blissful. This is left me — true approvement 
Of my love that grew so long and lowly. 



CXLIII. 

Under thy light I He like to the sea: 
To glow beneath thy ray my sea is fit ; 
Regions of light on me reflective sit. 
Thy beams and beauty all received be. 
But If thy look be gone, and cloudily 
Tempest beat down, made am I too for it; 
Most suitably on me the storms commit 
Their ravage, to what deeps their rage is free. 
'Tis well with me, 'tis very well, dear love: 
As not the sea, thou canst not do me ill 
That *s equal made for soft sky or for storm. 
Go then — 'tis right. From thy dear place above 
Thou dost my deeps with all thine image fill: 
Come wrack! When past, it leaves unbroke thy form. 



CXLIV. 

Beloved. I hold my love of thee thrice great; 
For love itself is exaltation vast : 
This is my grandeur and my high estate. 
Wherein I am enthroned first and last. 
Then had my love another high renown, 
Impurpled more than powers or glories past: — 
To love thee without hope, this is a crown. 
That weeping Faith upon my brow makes fast: 
Then was my love like breast of water stirred, 
As if in me a sad sweet sky were glassed ; 
I love thee without wishes: hast thou heard 
That more of worship ever love amassed? 

So hath my love no thoughts on me to spare; 

And, being so, it is my heart at prayer. 



CXLV 

My best and loved, oft have I questioned why 
My soul that loveth thee doth bid thee go, 
And see thee vanish far and long and slow. 
And follow after with uncloudy eye. 
But thus I answer: Thou hast made me try 
The very deeps of love, what it doth owe ; 
And being thus baptized, heart doth not know 
Love's selfish sin, but all love's virtue high. 
If then my love be virtue, wherefore not 
Virtue engraft with virtue's consecration. 
That hath a holy warrant to adore thee? 
0, 'tis a knightly love's most gallant lot 
To hold a hope forlorn — from mortal station 
r the lone night a watch and ward keep o'er thee. 



CXLVI. 

I seemed most strong and was as strong as seemed; 
But what? Boast of a strength and call it vast, 
When walls are broke that long were mighty deemed 
And I that was so brisk now limp at last? 
If nightingale gave his unfailing song 
To the dulled audience of the slumberous wood, 
But with a broken wing, were it not wrong 
To say his strength was gone while song withstood? 
His strength 's his song and eke his song his strength: 
And so of me what hath escaped let go, 
What breaks let break in time's most brittle length; 
My force is love and what love maketh growl 

Love served by power, but now by weakness more, 
Freeing thee from me, when my use is o'er. 



CXLVII. 

Two joys I have that be In one comprest. 
So like they are, and yet so unlike too — 
Twin reasons why with peace naught can undo 
Each several night I lay me to my rest: 
One joy is this — I love thee, dearest, best, 
With love most leal that in my soul is true; 
The other gladness this, — and for thee due — 
Thou lov'st not me. And these be equal blest I 
For if to love thee be so blissful lot, 
'Tis most my joy thy happiness to make; 
And this the less thou lov'st me, more do I. 
So hath this fate my dearest thanks begot: 
To love, loved not, rates twice for thy dear sake. 
Because I see thee in estate more high. 



CXLVIII. 

Again I kneel alone where oft before 
I knelt alone, and once with thee. I pray 
The same vows now I did in happier day, 
The while what once was sole is loneness sore. 
In dedicated precincts o'er and o'er 
I tell to heaven that I am glad to say 
Good joy hath led thy gentle feet away: 
I tell sad truth — and for that truth love more. 
0, Heart o' me, but I have erred above! — 
It was not happier day when I alone 
Knelt here, nor e'en when once with thee, at shrine. 
The blessed'st day is one most full of love: 
That day 's the last; for then love 's elder grown,- 
And, statured so. can thee for thee resign. 



CXLIX. 

Break, old heart, and be done wi' it. What care I ? 
You have been used enough : I 've strained you well. 
And ye have stood me fast, and never fell 
r the struggle. What now if ye crack and die? 
Your errantry was ever sweet and high ; 
You 've tasted wondrous joys — and sooth to tell 
You paid for them with pain: if now a knell 
Your beatings toll, what of 't? You lift no cry 
I stride you with one praise, you doughty heart, 
That like true knight your best deed is your last — 
From great encounter here you battered lie. 
0! 'twas a brave feat, and you depart 
With such love-honor as is never past : — 
And now, break, and be done wi' it. What care I ? 



CL. 



"Put out the light, and then put out the light!" 
He takes my eyes who takes the sun away: 
These many years thou art my golden day, 
And going now thou blindest all my sight. 
No more in this imperial verse I write, 
And am too newly darkened yet to stray 
To other song: the more for thee I pray. 
From love's lone cell enwalled in my night. 
In this sweet master-form thou wert my form. 
And hast enriched my every measure writ — 
Thou wert my heart, thought, dream, my music all. 
How can I with no heart a verse make warm, 
Or see to follow dark what thy love lit? — 
Lest I do fear, halt, grope, go ill and fall. 



CAMEOS. 



CAMEOS. 
I. 

The first line ever that 1 writ 

In this engraven form, 'tis fit 

To thee, sweet love, to offer it. 

For dally thou art first at morn. 

And dally thou art last at night; 

And when the noon hath ta'en his height, 

Above it thou my love hast borne. 

As so with me thy light doth sit, 

TIs meet thou tak'st what thou hast lit. 



II. 

I met a bird hid In a tree, 
Singing : but was It then for me 
He loosed unmeasured melody? 
Ay, was It. Though that blissful one 
Not me had known, nor I known him, 
From all his trills' delightful brim 
Of music, foreign drip was none. 
So let my song go wild and free: 
Whoe'er thou art. I sing to thee. 



III. 

'Twas never in the region wide 
Of human love or dream or pride 
Or purpose, beauty to deride. 
But if there be so sad a heart, 
Thus will I heal him: show him thee, 
And he will know full instantly 
That beauty hath the heavenly part. 
For never yet a soul hath eyed 
Thy grace but did conviction bide. 



IV. 

No thought is small that 's love, and true 
To love; and oldest thoughts most new 
And vernal are, being holiest too. 
Repeat me o'er what o'er and o'er 
With one another men have had 
Since their first song, and to it add 
Your soul's voice; — ye can tell no more; 
The simple-grand hath come to view; 
I bless the One in all, and you. 



Sweet verse, my all memorial 

Delights and bliss ethereal 

Single thy measures musical. 

Thou heal'st my lonesomeness in throngs, 

And bid'st the burly noise be still; 

If I be sole, with equal will 

Thou fill'st all solitude with songs. 

Nor want nor wish nor wall I shall, 

Proof with thy smile imperial. 



VI 



Four elements, sweet love, explore 

A way to build thee : First, a store 

Of lovely light that runneth o'er. 

This builds thine eye. Then sound is planned 

To be refined into thy voice: 

To shape thy feet swift winds rejoice: 

Soft exhalations mold thy hand. 

Then little earth, and no jot more 

Than just enough to hold the four. 



VII. 

The new day of another year 
Dawneth, and with it thou, my dear, 
Hand In my hand art with me here. 
Decllneth day, and ends eftsoon: 
Delayest thou, unaltered light; 
Or if thou go, my dreaming sight 
Enwinds thee In unwaning noon. 
Thee so I love as I revere 
Less one day's shine than all days* cheer. 

VIII. 

Dear gentle girl, I cost thee greatly: 
Like some base stuff when famine straitly 
Doth pinch, my price swells to be stately. 
I cost thee fear and doubt and strife, 
Lone pains and spiritual woes: 
Yet have I heard that dearest grows 
What thing hath dearest cost in life. 
0, by those pains inviolately 
Hold me the dearer passionately. 



IX. 

If e'er my occupation cease 

But momently, with swift release 

My heart hath sunk in thine to peace. 

Thou art the sea-deep undertone 

Of all my life, most dearest love. 

And If I cease to move above, 

Down sink I to thy heart, mine own. 

'Tis so in Nature's sweet caprice 

That drowned from sight best joys increase. 



X. 



If doves fly out and doves fly In, 
They make a dove-cot where have been 
Convened the nests of gentle kin. 
If thoughts fly in and thoughts fly out. 
What dwelling-place they fill in mind 
Dependeth on their kin and kind 
And what they fly around about. 
Whenas my thoughts thy bosom win, 
Flown back, they build a home within. 



XI 



I know not what my life could be 
Without my precious fear of thee. 
Wherein my heart Increaseth me. 
With fear I love, with love I move 
The more In fears; thy beauty high 
Seeing with venerating eye. 
Fear as love's best my soul doth prove. 
Sweet spirit, I have faith that we 
Wed well — my fear, thy high beauty. 

XII. 

Beloved, bethink thee, never less 
Can grow the quiet dear caress 
Yestreen thy lover's blessedness. 
Given by thee. 0. grave and slow, 
As fear-o'erlaid, kindled the fire 
Of thy fondness, then did not tire, 
And with a vehemence now doth flow 
About my heart : like loud sounds' stress. 
That be so sweet they not oppress. 



XIII. 

I live, I breathe the vapors blown 
From arctic berg or flowery zone. 
For that the pulsing heart its tone 
Impels unstilled. But if the heart 
Keepeth my body quick and swift, 
What is 't doth keep the heart, and lift 
Above decline that vital part? 
That office doth thy love alone. 
Who art my heart's heart. O my own. 



XIV. 

Blissful romance, forever be 

Light and beatitude in me 

'And life that riseth radiantly. 

Let me continue by this power 

To call her Star, Violet, Dove, 

My True, my Rest, and Sweet and Love, 

And every fond name every hour. 

Be not youth's grave, but treasury, 

And love thy love right manfully. 



XV. 

I do defy thee, daily Sun, 

In braver sky thine arc to run 

Or in more quiet west be done 

Than in my heart. What though a grief 

Invade me fiercely? So doth spot 

Mix with thy disk; it matters not. 

Who sees it in thy mighty sheaf 

Of golden darts? I will be one 

Whose woe 's light-lost like thine, great Sun. 

XVI. 

Nay, tell not me perpetual 

Is life, and eke hereafter shall 

Persist, if here youth's miracle 

Decay. 'Tis a mean youth that dies. 

And meaner manless age that molds 

A turbid death in th' fluent folds 

Where youth's sweet substance supple lies. 

Let life be love romantical. 

And then 'tis life prophetical! 



XVII. 

Dear love, what slumbers hast thou had? 
Thee with sweet image have I clad, 
And e'en in dreams chased what is sad? 
My soul doth one ambition hold 
That blazes like an altar fire; 
To make thee happy I aspire; 
Is that too large? Is that too bold? 
In my poor heart is 't hope gone mad. 
That I can make thee golden-glad? 



XVIII. 

Dear, I am not ambitious now, 

And to adventure know not how; 

With day's decline pride leaves my brow. 

I only plead thou me enfold; 

No more 1 boast courageous fire, 

But sole to rest in thee aspire. 

Is that too large? Is that too bold? 

Thee natively it doth endow, — 

Thou hast most when most givest thou. 



XIX. 

What 's fame, sweet verse ? 'Tis only this. 
That others know with what a Ijliss 
Thou wardest me, and what a kiss. 
But if thou choose a secret love, 
I would not show thee for the world 
To foreign eyes, but keep thee pearled 
In one hid gem my heart above. 
'Tis so I love thee all submiss; 
The which subdues fell care, I wis. 



XX. 

My simple verse, I do admire 
Your harmonies, your gentle fire 
Of happiness, your love entire. 
Ye make a chambered glow for me 
In which I walk about with you: 
So I am never out of view 
Of Light, though dark around it be. 
Ye spare me tumult and desire, 
And mad flame of ambition dire. 



XXI. 

To view thee 'mid a leafy grace 
Of woodland, is to see thy face 
A natural feature of the place. 
Ah ! love, that unforgetting night 
When we sat under weeping willows 
That laid their tips on watery pillows, 
As weary of both winds and light. 
The witchery for thee made space. 
As 'twould its beauty's kin embrace. 



XXII. 

Thou weep'st I Sv/eet eyes, be not ye marred 

That life is lone and work is hard 

The which no more thy counsels guard. 

The thought of thee is counsel still. 

Though silent be thy precepts wise; 

In solitary enterprise 

I yet can do as thou wouldst will. 

'Tis sweeter than breath of thyme or nard, 

Or poesy of loving bard. 



XXIII. 

B. T. L. 

Of many gentle names I hear, 
I know none gentler in the ear, 
Nor fluent in the mouth more clear 
Than Bertha. Triple charm is blent 
In its soft measures : fair 'tis, quite ; 
With sweet domestic claim 'tis dight; 
Of dignity 'tis eloquent. 
Then, so enriched, it doth appear 
By thee 'tis beauty growing dear. 

XXIV. 

M. C. H. 

friend, my friend, endearing friend, 
How late thou art! — yet doth no end 
With thy sweet ministry contend. 
What endeth not beginneth not: 
It seems as thou wert always here, 
Forever hast been mine and dear, 
And shone upon my lightsome lot. 
My part to thee sole this — to lend 
Thyself back to thyself, my friend. 



XXV. 

a G. s. 

Girl of the dark, deep, lovely eyes, 
And girl of the light, bright, lovely guise 
Of tresses like to opal skies! 
Girl of the deep, still, loyal heart, 
And girl of a love not spent in word 
Nor known by anything that 's heard. 
But " like a star and dwells apart!" 
Thy variant locks and orbs surprise : 
More doth thy dear worth pass surmise. 

XXVI. 

A. W. E. 

A dear, still girl, tressed with darts 
Of moonbeams! Sweet domestic arts 
Empower her; peace about her starts. 
Certes her heart can dance as well 
As her airy feet, with loveliness 
Of stillness. So with quietness 
She moves, her deeds seem done by spell. 
Blest value, never sold in marts, 
That peace from toil and moil disparts. 



XXVII. 

E. C. W. 

O thou sweet, gentle, faithful friend. 
Whose love how true to know no end. 
Thou nnov'st me with thy precious spend 
Of tears. I better bear to part 
If thou so much dost care, dost grieve 
To break the bond, to see me leave 
Our precious house of speaking heart. 
But I '11 not go from thee, but bend 
Dear years still round us to extend. 

XXVIII. 

M. L. L. 

"Tis strange, sweet friend, what ties pain weaves! 
I have not reaped the perfect sheaves 
Of thy known love till now, when heaves 
'Twixt us this parting. Bonds are broke 
Memorial, mighty, hallowed long : 
Lo 1 straightway new a bond as strong 
Hath in the very parting woke 
No more to slumber! What bereaves 
Me shows thee, then less sorely grieves. 



XXIX. 

R. & R. 

A lovely summer together, girls ! 
'Tis done; this silken flag Time furls — 
The fire o' the season spent up-whirls. 
Now one hath gone, the other stays ; 
And what shall my poor old fond heart do, 
Since naught is whole without my two! 
Ah me ! the sad, the sad half -days ! 
The song o' my heart like a brook out-purls; 
But where are your rosy feet, my girls? 

XXX. 

V. S. B. 

Thou gentle listener! it was brave 
O' thee to come ; and if thou gave, 
As didst, part o' my strength, so clave 
A power to soul ever. For soul 
Looms out o' thee, and valiant heart: 
Sweet earnestness, and artless art 
Of being true, from thee unroll 
Like heavens. These be thy tides did lave 
And lift me up — a deep-sea wave. 



XXXI. 

M. C. R. 

Verily thou didst silver nights 
Of fine excursion and boon flights, 
Under the purple of twinkling lights. 
But far, one golden holy day. 
Thou cam'st, my voice to glean and hold, 
As thou thy saddened teacher told 
He must not go too quick away. 
The silvered darks for mirthful sprites: 
That morn didst help me up to heights! 

XXXII. 

A. H. B. 

Sweet wife of my most sweet fierce friend, 
Thy home is beauty, where descend 
The very skies to fit their bend 
Under thy roof. Thence thou didst bring 
Thy peace, thy love, thy blessedness. 
Thy sweet domestic hallowedness. 
And round me all their virtue fling 
That golden morn. Thine eyes did lend 
Home-silence with my voice to blend. 



XXXIII. 

A. H. 

Unchanging in the changeable — 
This thy renown. Unmutable 
Thy spirit, whether in palpable 
Fierce pain, or love. So earnest thou 
That golden mom and brought'st with thee 
The fire of thy soul's constancy 
Devout, to flame against my brow 
And smite, me to speech. Th' adorable 
By thee in me grew tunable. 

XXXIV. 

C. H. M. 

And thou wert there! Where art thou not 
At need of mine ? Seems all my lot 
Minded of thee, else oft forgot. 
If I would speak thy loveliness 
In one rich word that should embrace 
Thy thoughts, thy love, thy form, thy face, 
'Twere this, thy life-deep faithfulness. 
Thou art a sky without a spjot, 
Or music that I endless wot. 



XXXV. 

L. W. R. 

"A girl that is a woman" — so 
Tis spoken o' thee ; and sure, I trow, 
Thus all thy mingling beauties show. 
A sweet and quiet certitude 
Filleth thy movements, look and voice ; 
As one who meets thee hath no choice. 
But trust he must, and on thee brood 
For very rest. Thou 'rt like a glow, 
Or like mid-sea where 's ebb nor flow. 

XXXVI. 

M. E. A. 

Thy resident spirit! O meseems 
Time carved the marble of my dreams 
To thy white image, that now beams 
On all I do. There 's not a page 
That I have writ or know to write. 
Or scrip of song I do indite 
These lingering years, but shines thy sage 
Sweet counsel in 't. What beauty gleams 
My visions o'er, with thine it streams. 



XXXVII. 

M. E. A. 

Thy resident spirit ! Thou 'rt like one 
So wealthy that a pearl 's undone 
With every step, and down doth run 
Into some nook. So find I now 
Thy jeweled vigils here and there. 
Emerging to me everywhere — 
Signs of thy presence once, and vow 
To help me ever. Vanished — and none 
Can finish what thou hast begun. 

XXXVllI. 

J. E 

Thou startledst me with thy kind eyes. 
My mind wherewith as wings did rise 
And got me to the very skies 
Of comfort. For I had o'erlooked 
Thee on a time ; didst brush away 
The memory, and simply say, 
"Then still I wait" — thy spirit brooked 
Naught hurtful. Not the fairest dyes 
Of comfort's heaven out-fair thine eyes. 



XXXIX. 

Thou 'rt near thine end, my little book; 
If thou before wilt cast a look, 
Thou 'It see thine end hard by, like brook 
That nears a sea. Thou hast been coy — 
Thy favors have been hard to bind; 
To trim thee to my heart and mind 
Hath been adventurous employ, 
But wedded and dear. Now hast forsook 
And left me lone, lone, lone, my book. 



XL. 

My loved one own, spirit serene. 
Memory's lovely child, between 
Us giant Time hath laboring been. 
He builds a mountain to the skies, 
And piles his wall of years that soar 
In crags and blocks jagged and frore 
And threaten to love-patient eyes. 
Sad days! Yet vain 's the wall I ween; 
Thy love 's a sun around it seen. 



XLI. 

K. E. T. 

I thought my book at end ; but thou 
Makest another heart-wave now 
To break and sprinkle o'er my brow. 
Thy written syllables are voice, 
Thy voice almost as still as they ; 
'Silence is pleased " with either v/ay, 
And doth with heart o' me rejoice. 
Thy words my soul as pasture plow. 
Disturb, and with new fruit endow. 



XLII. 

K. £. T. 

Delicate spirit, of honored name. 
Thy dear epistles are a fame 
If mount for me no other claim. 
Thy mind is brave, adventured 
Thy judgment so to honor me; 
But I the more shall gladsome be 
That in thy voice am famoused, — 
Gladsome and strong: nor needeth aira 
Above thy praise my verse beflame. 



XLIII. 

A. D. W. 

Thy hunger my hunger feeds ! 

Thy flights uneased where beauty leads 

Assuage my spiritual needs. 

When I aspiring love have known 

Beflame me like a mist of fire, 

Then hath thy nobler great desire 

Seemed satisfaction for my own; — 

As one who sees heroic deeds 

And loves them, with the hero bleeds. 



XLIV. 

J. M. E. H 

Dear friend, thy bevy of languages 

Enlarge thee with rich portages 

For fruits of all thy forages 

Looking for beauty. Yet thy soul, 

So lexiconed, hath prevalence 

With silence — finer eloquence 

Than all thy dialects enroll : 

Thy fervorous life is messages 

From Scripture's prime, Love's images. 



XLV. 

M. M. L. 

thou Norwegian beauty, girl 
Most lovely, down a-back a curl. 
Around thy brow thy hair a-twirl. 
Textures of white o'er neck and arm. 
A scarlet bodice, tinseled bright. 
That throws a touch of warmer light 
Over thy cheek's soft flushing charm, 
Sweet spirit, earth and stars may whirl. 
But find me no such other girl. 

XLVI. 

M. M X.. 

1 knew I had a friend— now find 

A poet, with verse both fair and kind, 
Like to her image in my mind. 
Friend, prythee ever look on me 
With thy poetic sight, to know 
My faultiness but in the glow 
Of a transforming beam of thee : 
Till that my faults, so lit, have shined, 
And with thine own light struck thee blind. 



XLVII. 

G. M. 

Dear girl, thou honorest me ; and I 
Haste to be honored, like a sky 
That thankful pours to earth from high.- 
Vapors from earth received. A song 
Thou askest, and 'tis easy thing 
To sing thee ; for I so but bring 
Thee tunes that first to thee belong : 
Thy wish for song is so sweet cry 
Of song, 'twere deafness to deny. 

XLVIII. 

A. C. M. 

Let me but faithfully believe 
In bravery, let me conceive 
The dearest things that bless or grieve I — 
So shall I picture thee, dear friend, 
And eke thy lot enroll — both great 
With woman's wonderful estate 
Of joy, hope, fear and pangs that end 
Never; and thy sweet worths achieve 
That I must love and to thee cleave... 



XLIX. 

R. F D 

Thou livest a pure mightiness 

Of miracled devotedness 

Walking on love with quietness 

As on sea deeps : and voyaging thought 

Its wealth upon thy soul unloads, 

Vessel arrived from heaven on roads 

Of love's same sea, with treasures fraught. 

Thought and love joined are blessedness — 

Heaven's infinite, earth's tenderness. 

L. 

Belike some say with cold accord 

That I too many have adored. 

My song no honor can afford. 

But O ! not so ! My heart is moved 

With thoughts the own of each ; by all, 

Then more by each, my raptures fall. 

And poet-seer's sweet song is proved — 

"Joy shed in rosy waves abroad 

Flows from the heart of love, the Lord."^ 



L/. 

When flleth forth a carrier dove — 
Plumes preened close as velvet glove — 
And like swift skiff doth onward shove 
His air- wave way. he minds me, dear, 
Of thee who, far by space apart, 
Dost find straight air-way to my heart, 
Nor leav'st me lone, nor fail'st me near 
By that sweet light about, above, — 
My book's last word — thy love. 



NOTES. 



NOTES. 



THE SONNETS. 

XV. For some weeks I passed often by a field where was ao 
old circus ring. 

XXI. I found a stray scrap of paper on which was printed a 
sonnet of Shakespeare. 

XXIV. Palissy. 

XXVII. Lines i and 2 from translation of Michael Angelo's 
sonnets by John Addington Symonds. 

XXXIII. One night in my cycle riding, I came under a 
window where was a crowded party of dancers. 

XXXVII. Under the shadows of Monadnock. 

XLII. During a storm on Lake Michigan. 

XLIV. and XLV. Sonnets of the same thought — hopes 
turned unlikely or impossible. 

XLVII. and XLVIII. Memories of a pentle woman whose 
severe toil, unremitting and exacted, made any rest for me seem 
shameful privilege. 

XLIX. See Shakespeare's Sonnet XXIII. 

LI. October. 

LII. The Golden Rod. 

LV. Disparity. 

LXVI., LXVII., LXVIII. New Year sonnets written for my 
people. 

LXIX. Written on a Christmas Day. 

LXXI., LXXII., LXXIII. A sequence. 

LXXXII. On a summer morning I met a little girl clad all in 
xed. 

LXXXIII. Against extradition treaty with the Russian Tzar. 



LXXXIV. To Fallacia; LXXXVII. to the same. Terent, 
Andria, Act IV., See. IV. 

LXXXVI. A fable by Lessing. 

LXXXVII. See LXXXIV. To the same Fallacia — fit name, 
by my experience: otherwise "nonnuUius in Uteris nominis." 

XCII., XCIII. To my daughters, Rachel Frazier and Ruth 
Deering, for a Christmas gift, 1S96. 

XCIV. Sidney H. Morse. To those who know him I need 
say no more; to those who know him not, I could not say enough 
in volumes. 

XCV., XCVI., XCVII. Horace H. Badger. 

XCVIII. Lowell Blake Mason, son of Hon. W. E. Mason, 
U. S. Senator, and Julia Edith V^hite; my god-child in the middle 
name. 

XCIX. J. Franklin Hughes, a musician of elevated and 
beautiful gift. The grand organ by which he discoursed elo- 
quehtly in my church, was destroyed by fire, in October, 1896 — 
Sonnets C, CI. 

CII. Mary L. Lord. Cameo XXVIII. 

CHI. Clara H. (Perkins) Mahony. See Dedication. Cameo 
XXXIV. 

CIV. Myra Perkins. 

CV. Mary L. Perkins, the venerable mother of the two fore- 
mentioned sisters, distinguished by the old-time lovely and 
elevated manners joined with fervor of heart and fine mind. 
This sonnet was written for her eightieth birthday. 

CVI. Silvanus Smith and Judith W. McLauthlin. — their 
golden wedding, November 25, iSgr. 

CVII. Matilda Goddard. Theodore Parker called her St. 
Matilda, and her friends seized on the fitting name. Crawford's 
noble statue of Beethoven stood on the platform of the Boston 
Music Hall, where Theodore Parker preached. 

CVIII. Licinia E. Hilton. For her brother, see XCV. 

CIX. M. Estella Austin — mea libraria, condiscipula etiam 
carissima ei koioratissima. Beaii ab ilia qui honorati tint. 
Cameos XXXVI., XXXVII. 



ex. Eva G. Waneer. Cameo XXVII. 
CXI., CXII. Grace M. Curtis — /« Memoriam. 
CXIII. Emerson Blake Bushnell, son of Rev. Charles F. 
Bushnell and Margaret Dreutlein; my god-child in the middle 
name. 

CXIV. Louisa L. Ware. She asked me to make a sonnet of 
a thought in a writing which I had sent to her : CXV. the thought. 
CXVI. Mary H. Ware — sister of Louisa L. 
CXVII. M. Emma Powers. 

CXVIII. Katharine L. Halpin, at birth of her twin boys. 
CXIX. Alice L. Taylor. 

CXX., CXXI. To a vagrant dog. I place these among my 
personal sonnets at bidding (in which I concur heartily) of my 
friend (Sonnet CII.) who, returning me some manuscripts, said, 
" Here are all the personal sonnets with names — unless you will 
put those to the vagrant dog among the personal ; and I think you 
ought to." The same applies to CXXII. 

CXXII. To a horse lying in the street, having died there. 
CXXIII. Frederick L. Hosmer — on occasion of his criticism 
of some of my verse. I will not let go by the opportunity to 
express my love of his hymns. He has not written very many— 
"soul-animating strains ,' las I too few;" but for quality I deem 
bim among the few mos precious hymnists of the world. 
CXXIV. Martha / . Welch. 

CXXV. Emma '^. Roche, wife of Hon. John A. Roche. 
CXXVI. Frederick C. Wilson. In Memoriam. 
CXXVII. Frank A. Wait. In Memoriam. 
CXXX.— CL. A song of farewell. 

CXXXIV. I met the two beautiful lines that open this sonnet 
in a book unfamed, and to me unknown, which I opened by 
chance at a book stall. 

CXXXVII.— CXXXIX. A Command, the Obedience, After- 
thought. 

CXLII. Trochaic. 

CXLIII. For the imagery of this sonnet I am indebted to a 



sonnet on Abraham Lincoln, by Richard Watson Gilder, in which 
be finely speaks of Lincoln as 

"That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea 

For storms to beat on." 
See Higginson's "American Sonnets," p. 82. 

THE -CAMEOS. 

XXin. Bertha T. Lewis. 

XXIV. Minnie C. Hughes. 

XXV. Belle G. Scribner. 

XXVI. Anna W. Edwards. See XXXVIII., Sisters. 

XXVII. See Sonnet CX. This number and XXVIH., XXXI.. 
reter to my parting from my church. 

XXVIII. See Sonnet ClI. 

XXIX. See Sonnets XCII., XCIII. 

XXX. Virginia S. Brannon. The courage of conviction, of 
thought, and of choice of a church, is no small valor. 

XXXI. Minnie C. Renter. There were fine wheel-rides the 
Summer of 1897. This number and XXXII., XXXIII., XXXIV., 
refer to a certain radiant Autumnal Sunday, when these and one 
other (XXX.) went to listen to me at Evanston, 

XXXII. Anna H. Bregger. 

XXXIII. Alice Hayward. 

XXXIV. See Sonnet CIII. 

XXXV. Louise W. Russell. 
XXXVI., XXXVII. See Sonnet CIX. 
XXXVIII. Jennie Edwards. See XXVI., Sister*. 

XLI., XLII. Katherine E. Tuley, wife of Hon. Judge Tuley. 
In XLII the reader naturally will be careful to make music with 
the last syllable (ed) in lines 4 and 7. 

XLIII. Alice D. Wiley. 

XLIV. Julia M. E. Hintermeister. 

XLV., XLVI. Marion M. Lewis. 

XLVII. Georgine Mahony. 

XLVIII. Agnes C. Montgomery. 

XLIX. Eva F. Davis. 



NOTES FOR MY FRIENDS. 



NOTES FOR MY FRIENDS. 



I. Description alone is not proper to a Sonnet, as I think. 
For either the space of the Sonnet must be too small for the 
details, or else the object is not worthy substance for the Son- 
net. But the case is different when the details are not for them- 
selves, but as only a special vocabulary, brief perhaps, of a 
thought. See remarks on this point in "Letter." 

II. A friend writing to me of this Sonnet has said: "De 
Quincey says the plowman would dream of huge plows, enor- 
mous oxen, furrows like river beds; but the philosopher would 
dream of transcendent things, and tread the grand path to the 
borders of the infinite — or words to that effect. I never could 
quote. You have an equally forceful and more beautiful way 
of uttering this deep truth. It has a quiet beauty." 

IV. A note from a friend says: "The second line is very tell- 
ing. What a touching and dignified humility. I would venture 
to change, 'but let stay there.' It is too commonplace an ending 
to a Sonnet of fancy and sentiment." 

V. The phrasing in this Sonnet is to be noted; first, for its 
variety down to the last line of the octave; secondly, for the 
contrast, suitable to the change of thought, of the long phrasings 
with the short of octave. 

VI. The form of this Sonnet is to be noted, because of the 
phrasing. Every quatrain hath the same phrasing, which is 



varied in every line of the quatrain, and the last line thereof is 
all one without pause. Some assert that every line of the heroic 
form has the pause — caesura ; but I am persuaded that it is one of 
the varieties of that pause, whereof composers may avail them- 
selves, that a line may have no pause at all and should be read^ 
as it were, at a breath, or with one unfaltering stream of tone; 
and this may extend to a phrase longer than an entire line, 
affording, when contrasted suitably with shorter phrases, a fine 
effect and beauty by reason of a rolling maintenance of utterance 
like a long billow. Note, then, in this Sonnet that the first line 
has three phrases, whereof the first and third have equal length, 
turning on a middle short. The second line has two phrases, 
of which the first is like the main phrases of first line. The 
third line has one phrase, like the second phrase of the second 
line; and then begins a long rolling phrase without drop to 
the end of the quatrain. Each quatrain having re-echoed 
this phrasing exactly, the couplet then comes with a new phras- 
ing all its own. The first couplet line is one phrase unbroken, 
and the second has two phrasings equal in length but varied in 
accent, and both of them differing from any other phrase of the 
Sonnet. I think this a very beautiful structure of phrases, very 
easy of pleasing elocution; and no sacrifice is made for it, for 
neither is the sense obscured nor diction forced. For another 
treatment of the thought of this Sonnet, see XXXVI. 

VII. Herein I wished to assert four great privileges and 
blessednesses of love, namely, that it is shelter, that it is courage^ 
also hath a grand pride, and a pure piety. 

IX. Of this a friend has said: "There is a deference so real 
in this Sonnet that it adds a beauty." I may claim this — 'Tis 
sincere, being a conversion of reverence into thought, and both; 
into form. 



XIV. Will you look for and find, dear my friend-reader, the 
internal harmonies in this Sonnet — ^alternately rhymed qua- 
trains of sound, woven into each four lines, and a couplet into 
the last two, the line-end harmonies of the Italian form pro- 
ceeding meantime. Compare also LXXVII. I will add an- 
other example here, the following Sonnet, one which I had 
forgotten but found after this book had been finished. I know 
not that I should have included it even if found in time — very 
likely not; yet I will oflfer it as another example of internal 
echoes at the same places in the lines: 

In sweet surprises kindness lies full dearly, 

In kindness then surprise lurks, so I ween; 

"How may that be?" thy kindness cries. Ah! clearly 

How wonder in all love works may be seen. 

What is so great as love? Speak, if thou know itl 

What glory is like to love's glory? — Aught? 

Burn more the heavens above? Declare and show it! 

What story is like to love's story? Naught. 

Who can sufficient be for this great thing? 

Whoso loves worthily will bend and pray — 

With awe and wonder see love to him cling. 

As pools still lowlily repeat the day. 

Love is devout, with holy amazement moved: 

His love is out who is not awed, being loved. 

XV. Of this a comrade has written me: "There is therein an 
old touch of human affection such as I always find on the pages 
of St. Solifer. Not one of the whole collection has more charms 
within itself." I will accept the valuation thankfully. The Son- 
net has a certain dearness to my heart. I never looked without 
emotion on the old circus-ring that bred the Sonnet. 

XXII. A song of song, and even of the wish to sing. This 
runs here into a love. I have happened among my papers on 
two lyrics of a like thought, which I had forgotten entirely, and 
I will insert them here: 



A VISIT. 

what a thought! Quick, hand, take pen! Sing! 
Prison this theme and make it fast in verse 

Ere it betake itself on mocking wing 
To vanish, disperse. 

1 am o'erflowed with joy, the trees with bloom. 
All voices sing, brooks loosen, flowers blow 

By this great thought, whose call through every gloom 
Proclaimeth 'tis so. 

I think this air I breathe is all alive: 
I think the earth, not I, lifteth my feet 
And makes them move; I think all beings strive 
My pleasure to meet! 

The sky is all aflame with this wide thought; 
Th' exalted heavens dissolve, and men are left 
Alone with God, and all the soul, full-fraught, 
With glory is cleft. 

Hand write, eye look, ear listen and voice shout. 
And all begin the song in me hath sprung! 
I have forgot what I should sing about: 
No matter; 'tis sung. 



FORTH! 

Sing me a song of the song! 
Awake my soul, I say. 
Sing me a matin lay; 
For the morn's awake and abroad, and I am strong. 

Try not to sing the day; 
Can thy two open eyes 
See round the all-round skies? 
Canst sing the glorious morn with all thy lay? 

As when a song of old 
The stars of morning sung, 
New-made and high up-hung. 
To sing the stars that sang would'st thou be bold? 



.5 

Or if "the sons of God 
Shouted for joy," and sang 
Till new creation rang, 
Dar'st thou, to sing these sons, pour song abroad? 

And when the hill-tops flame. 
Like Sinai, to display 
Eternal laws, new day, 
These dar'st thou try proclaim, that God proclaim? 

Nay, nay, not these my song 
Will dare; but a song I bring 
Of the song I can not sing; 
For the morn's awake and abroad, and I am strong. 

XXIV. A friend has surprised me with these words of this 
Sonnet: "There appears to me a deeper feeling in this poem than 
such an aHen subject should inspire. Whether it is the force 
and swing of these lines or not, I shall always think this is one of 
the poems into which some heartfelt expression has gone — an 
expression that could not be made in plainly directed words. 
Syrinx is a song of your heart, as this is. This is magnificent." 

XXIX. Line seven is measured thus: 

C IfMJC-'l? Mr Ml II 

XXX. Of this says one friend: "A very peculiar Sonnet. I 
do not feel I understand certainly what you mean. If I were 
told to write the thought I should do it thus: 'Listening with 
all of these (the leaves, etc.) my spirit is held by a stillness and 
made submissive to silence. But while thus mute I am most fit 
to voice my love for you.' Now, if this be the thought, I must 
submit that the form is very difficult. The first eight lines give 
no clue to the subject of listening the opening word. In the 
ninth line you are perplexed with the question, 'Does Stillness 
hold the spirit submiss to Silence, or does the spirit hold Still- 
ness submiss to Silence?' The thought of the ending couplet 
is exquisite when conceived, but ambiguous as written. 'Fit 



voice' is not poetical enough for such a delicate thought. The 
form of the Sonnet is not good — that is, I mean the succession of 
phrases is displeasing — ^too long drawn out. But it has none 
the less a beauty that makes it worth the reading and study. 
Perfectly delightful is 'Of dewy leaves,' etc., and the phrases 
following are truly and decidedly poetical." 

Of this judgment another says: "I have read this many times, 
unable to come to any definite conclusion. I find no obscurity 
such as our friend seems to find; but I agree with him in nam- 
ing it most peculiar. The first four Hues are exquisite in sound 
and in descriptive power; but after that there seems to be a 
sudden decline, not so much because the lines are poorer in 
quality, as because they pall upon the mind. The first four and 
a half lines seem to be enough." From this latter judgment 
another friend dissents. I leave all standing as they have ex- 
pressed themselves. 

XXXI. As first written I had the expression "eye-brow 
clouds" in seventh line, figuring the clouds as the brows of the 
sun-eye. On this I have had comments as follows: 

"This has several beauties and is musical in an unusual degree. 
It is the only one of the collection in which I should pass 'eye- 
brow clouds.' But that phrase seems eminently in place here. 
I like the dignified humor of the ending. The remarkable 
rhyming here has not discomposed your thought, for I do not 
detect any attempt at forcing. The virtues of the thing do not 
dawn on you for a long time. The thought is a wholesome one." 

Another writes: "I like this — all but 'eye-brow clouds.' I 
cannot agree with our friend. The expression spoils the Sonnet 
for me. The more I read it the less I like it — in that one ex- 
pression." 

XXXII. I know not what you will say, my friends, of this 
departure from the honored form; but I will quote one of you 
to all of you: 



"While the Sonnet is irregular, I think it is one of those in- 
stances where the usual form has been safely departed from. 
The treatment is good. The rhyming is splendidly managed, 
leaving the noble thought to be sustained by undecorated dig- 
nity. The triple rhymes are unusual and pleasing. On the 
whole I find not one adverse comment to make, and, while the 
poem is not as strong as some others, it is one of the most 
pleasing." 

XXXV. I will confess to you that I take great pleasure and 
find a very happy beauty in this Sonnet. The phrasing by which 
the expression of the manner of the speech and voice is extended 
line by line, while the expression of the result or influence of the 
speech and voice is shortened by like and equal degrees, is to me 
facile and lovely for recitation, and lays the emphasis richly on the 
presentation or arising of the voice. Mark, too, that the sestet, 
especially the first tercet thereof, is written in long continuous 
phrasings, for contrast with the form of the octave, and for a 
sustainment in the closing. Having said this, I will copy here 
a dissent and remarks from a friend: 

"I do not care for this. I like the sestet better than the octave. 
Whether it ought to be so or not, the mechanism of this Sonnet 
oppresses me. I said I liked the sestet better than the octave; but 
I must read it by itself in order to like it at all. The construction 
in the first six lines so interferes with my grasp of the thought 
that at the end of the sixth line I am not able to sympathize 
with the culminating thought. Walter Bagehot, in an essay on 
'Pure, Ornate and Grotesque Art in English Poetry,' quotes two 
sonnets from Wordsworth, 'The Trossachs' and 'Composed 
Upon Westminster Bridge,' and then comments thus: 'In- 
stances of barer style than this may easily be found, instances 
of colder style — few instances of purer style. Not a single 
expression (the invocation in the concluding couplet of the sec- 



ond Sonnet perhaps excepted) can be spared, yet not a single 
expression rivets the attention. If, indeed, we take out the 
phrase — 

"The city now doth, like a garment, wear 
The beauty of the morning," 

and the description of the brilliant yellow of autumn — 

"October's workmanship to rival May," 

they have independent value, but they are not noticed in the 
Sonnet when we read it through; they fall into place there, and 
being in their place, are not seen. The great subjects of the two 
Sonnets, the religious aspect of beautiful but grave Nature — 
the religious aspect of a city about to awaken and be alive, are 
the only ideas left in our mind. To Wordsworth has been 
vouchsafed the last grace of the self-denying artist; you think 
neither of him nor his style, but you cannot help thinking 
of — you must recall — the exact phrase, the very sentiment he 
wished." 

XXXVI. I will ask you to note, my friends, that in the octave 
of this Sonnet there is not any couplet occasioned by end- 
stopped lines. It would be going too far to say that the occur- 
rence of a couplet in such a manner is a substantial blemish ; but 
I do think it is foreign to the genius of the Sonnet form Italian, 
and the absence of it is a virtue which causes a special beauty. 
For another treatment of the substance of this Sonnet, see VI. 
For Sonnets of the same general thought, namely, good cheer 
— echoing Emerson's remark that you may know a true bard 
by his firm and cheerful tone — see X, XI, XXXI, XL, 
LXXVIII. Here I will append, in extension of this thought, 
a short discourse which hitherto I have not been allowed to 
print. I wished to make a bit of a book of it for a special pur- 



9 

pose, but two friends (L. L. W., CXIV., and Dr. Joseph Henry 
Allen) forbade. They said it was too personal, and Dr. Allen, 
a venerable and noble scholar, who exercises my heart unto 
both love and reverence, said: "If we should find now such a 
document by George Herbert, how precious we should deem it!" 
But I wrote not the little tractate as a sum of my experience, 
but rather as a human ideality treated under narrative and indi- 
vidual form. Any way, it will not seem out of place in these 
private notes. I call it 

THE GARDEN OF A DAY. 

The Bible makes the first dwelHng of the first man a garden. This 
is no little of the beauty of that story of creation. And I find a good 
grace and cheerful tone in the purpose of man in the garden, as the 
good Book has it, "The Lord took the man and put him into the gar- 
den of Eden, to dress it and to keep it." (Gen. II. 15). The word 
"dress" is a good one herein, and very cheering, for which we may 
thank the elder translators. It is a good thought that being put in 
a garden, the purpose is that we may dress what already is lovely, 
and make it bloom the more. I find the Hebrew word Englished by 
"dress" means to work, and is the same word that is in the command, 
"Six days shalt thou labor," etc.; hence, to work or till the soil of the 
garden. But I like the rendering "dress;" for it is a phrase both com- 
mon and happy that we dress the ground, meaning we till it; nay, 
we even call the spreading of an unsightly fertilizer "a top dressing," 
as if it were but an outer cloak against the weather and to protect the 
under robes of green which soon take its place. Therefore to "dress" 
is a good rendering of "work" or "till," and the better that it carries 
sense of adorning therewith. Man, being in the garden, was to "dress" 
it with fruits and flowers and all the beauties that would come of the 
regard and tillage of it. 

Now surely this is a good image of our estate, and very likely not 
far from the old poet's mind. We live in a garden, which is the earth. 
And what part of that garden have we but this very day and place 
we are in? Wherefore the earth is a vast garden and this day and 
place our corner in it. And if we dress not our corner, and all Hke- 
wise did naught in their corners, where were the dressing of the garden? 



10 

But how dress it? — this is to be looked at. Consider. If we went 
into a garden to work and could add no perfection, it being all made 
well, then we could dress it only with ourselves, that is, by using it as 
a garden and joying in it, and behaving ourselves as in a garden. 
But this is our case. Every day is a garden-day, and nothing can be 
added to the shape that the Master Gardener has dressed it withal. 
It is full of the bloom of a garden; but if we behave as if in no gar- 
den but in a desert, then we dress it not in the sole way we have; no, 
but in truth ravage it, like swine in a bed of flowers. 

Often have I thought I would count the delights in the garden of 
a day, and once I set myself to it. Indeed it were good sport for a 
grumbler, for it is like racing on foot after an antelope, and the man 
would pant too hard with the run awhile to find breath for singing 
"Willow." I gave up the counting soon because there seemed no 
end to it, like Palissy who set himself to numbering the arts that 
had need of wood, but after a little made a stop, because he could 
think not how any art could exist without wood. Yet though I went 
not far, the few things that I counted were so fine that they are worth 
the telling. Thus I began: First I counted my waking. And when 
I put it in a place by itself, to look at it with no other of the garden 
fruits near it, I was astonished mightily to see what a flower of the 
garden it is! Now not to be and now to be, now I know not where and 
now here, now senseless, how I know not, and now, again how I 
know not, full of senses that lay hold of myself and of everything — 
what an amazing quick delight is that! What a sea of wonder to be 
cast in! And how am I buoyed up in it, like in a Huron fable the 
woman who fell from the sky into the sea when all was a waste of 
waters, and all the sea-creatures gathered to keep her afloat till land 
could be made out of earth brought up from the bottom of the sea by 
some of the great ocean animals. Then when land was made, soon 
she brought forth twins; and in like manner my awaking is the mother 
of a double issue, myself and all the creation! 

After this count, I came to the light, which was to be counted. 
Thomas Fuller calls light "God's eldest daughter," and like him Mil- 
ton, "Offspring of Heaven, first born;" and again Sir Thomas Browne 
calls it "The shadow of God." But I like none of these very well. The 
Bible phrase is better, "The light of his countenance." What a pleas- 
ure to see light! Which is to say. What a pleasure to see! for light is 
the visibleness of anything. Shakespeare's elate images are good — 
"The jocund Day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain top," and "The 



n 

Dawn, in russet mantle clad, walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern 
hill." The entering of light at the open eye is a glorious flower in 
the garden. 

Next, I must still count from the eye; for, turning my head, I see 
sleeping shapes near,— my beloved. And what a delight, what a rose 
of the garden, is this to count. And how can it be numbered aright 
if only it be counted one; since I must count one for each dear being 
who is in sight? Here were a chapter in itself, here were a long song 
of delight; but if I am to count I must mark each charm ofif quickly; 
else never shall I reach the end of my beginning. , 

Next, I count a joy for the sense of my ears, for there comes to me 
a rare music. My children awake in a room near by and begin to 
sing together. For this is their wont not seldom. They sing song 
after song, in parts, in unison, as may be; — it makes a wondrous leap 
of the heart in me. This counts one flower in the garden, but fain 
would I call it a hundred or a thousand. 

For another count I must lay finger on my beginning to think; or, 
better I may say, thoughts come pouring into me like the light and 
the voices; and each thought is a quick glow and swift delight, if I 
but take note of it. Yet I must put these all together as one count, for 
never I should end counting this one flower, thought, if I must num- 
ber every petal of it. 

Here is a garden indeed. All these flowers and delights in one little 
spot of my corner of it! For yet I have but waked, not arisen to look 
around me fairly. But now I get me up and go to the window, where 
a rare sight I have to count, for it is "a lovely gray day;" no sun, 
but a tender and soft gray with silver edges. Then I have to count 
the bath which daily I apply to me — a delight in which my whole body 
seems resolved into sense. Draw the water at night so that at morning 
it has the temperature of the room, and have not so much of it as to 
take the body by too harsh surprise, and yet not too little, which then 
would chill by too slow dipping, — and tHfere shall be no shock, only a 
keen deliciousness. And the sense of cleanliness thereafter which makes 
the mind feel kingly — I must count one for that, like an honor or deco- 
ration. And the glow of strength that follows — that is a count. Then 
do I attire myself, — which means that I put on comfort and wealth — 
two counts. Here is a garden indeed! I cry again; for as yet I have 
had but myself. All these delights have come to me while I am alone. 

But now come other persons to me, and I have to count the family 
greetings in the morning; and every one is a count, for each is dif- 



12 

ferent and has a charm of its own like to no other. Then, the break- 
fast! And now I would be glad to know who can count me the counts. 
For I have a keen call for food in me which makes every mouthful 
a wondrous satisfaction. But first I have a wish for a cool water 
drink; and what sensation is like that which travels over me with that 
cool draught! And now where a void is, mere filling is a delight. At 
would spread a soft ease over me to have the stomach merely shoveled 
its fill. But the eating, the crispness, the softness, the melting, the 
flavors — I will count every one of them; yea, and the warm drink, that 
salutes first the intellectual nostril. Here is a garden indeed, with 
flowers in banks, I cry again; for with all these delights I have but 
come down stairs, and not gone out. 

Therewith I go out doors, and now begin new and amazing counts. 
I must count first the farewell at the door. This, indeed, if the woman 
will, may be as unnumerable as a surface, for though you may count 
it one, it may have no edge nor ending but spread over the whole 
garden of the day. Now am I in the ocean of air, and I take a deep 
breath — that's a count. And it fans my cheeks — I must count both 
of them; and cools my throat which I like to unwrap and bare to it; 
I count that. The sun has broken forth; and here should I stand and 
count forever if I should number the things that the sun begirts me 
withal, or tell by numeration the majesty of it. I can but count one 
and go on numbering. For there are the heavens, which I would 
fain number by all the points of the compass, such delights they shower 
on my eyes; and birds fly under them like bits of shadows, and each 
should count two, one for his shape to my eye and one for his song 
to my ear. Amid all these wondrous delights I go to my work. 

And what shall I count my work? What can I but a thousand or 
ten thousand, one for every moment of it. How speak well enough of 
the happiness, the dignity, the usefulness, which work is? It is health 
and precious bodily good. It is force and precious mental good. 
Pleasures grow bright and gted by it, being fairly earned. Nay, work 
itself grows pleasure; even if it be but digging or any irksome thing 
whatever, I say it shall grow to pleasure, being joyful to look back on. 
He who works moreover, has somewhat wholly his own, deeds belong- 
ing altogether to himself. Carlyle calls work the "Modern Majesty." 
Who knows where labor speeds? It goes as a word flies, anywhere, 
everywhere. A Chinese emperor had a good saying — That if any man 
worked not, or if any woman was idle, some one thereupon must suffer 
cold or hunger in the empire. Our work may be a struggle to a grand 



13 

deed. But what if it be labor in a small way, obscure, unheeded, in 
corners? The truth is the same. For duty, how common soever, may 
be done in a grand way. "Of every noble work the silent part is best." 
Little troubles pass by a worker, because he is in high company with 
his work. If we are set on by temptations and whirling desires, lay 
hold of work, and to it! And if we have divine sorrows, unthanked 
labor, loneliness, walking aside, reaching out where once was a form 
to find but air, lay hold of work, and to it! For this converts sorrow 
into knowledge. Indeed I know not how to count this flower of work 
in the day's garden, but go on from it, for I am numbering. 

Then comes the noon, high noon, "yellow, glorious, golden" — an- 
other count. With that comes rest; and this again I might number by 
minutes, one for each minute — so sweet a flower is rest after work. 
Then the dining, I count it one; and renewed appetite, another one; 
and every flavor and grace of food and drink, each one I count one 
again as at the morning meal. Then work begins again — another count. 
And now, mayhap, as the day grows, our work may grow to a shape 
— we may see a result formed. This is great delight — a hearty count. 

"Now comes the gentle evening on." Coolness drops from the 
heaven down, and from the earth arises; they mingle in dew. Clouds 
shine in the west. The sun has sunk beneath them; his beams stream 
up into them, crimson, purple, gold. Soon he is gone, and dusk comes, 
— a tender, gathering dusk — light's silence. Every one of these colors, 
every bright ray in the cloud, every spot of gray dusk, I must count 
one, so sweetly apply these flowers to the eye and of so lovely colors 
they are. Now as the silence of wisdom rebukes clamors, so in the 
shade the clamors of the market die. Soon it is dark. Then comes the 
lighting of the highway lamps. They stud the street with stars, and 
every window is moon-like, and the earth is a firmament of constel- 
lations. I will count every lamp that the eye falls on, for there is 
none but I welcome it, none but flashes a little pleasure into me. Now 
I turn my feet homeward. I must bethink me how fine it is to walk 
fast — every strong step of health is a bloom in the garden. Where I 
discern my home-lamps, I must count every moony window, for not 
one of them but has its meaning, and I know what is behind the cur- 
tain, and it makes my heart leap. Then quicken my steps, faster and 
faster; I must count the speed — it is a bloom. Behold against the win- 
dow faces prest — every one of them to be counted by every feature 
in them. A rush of feet at the door, old and young arms outstretched, 
a clamorous bevy with a welcome, and lovings, and claimings and call- 



14 

ings — count these who can. I have forgotten my reckoning. 'Tis in 
the myriads! 

In the garden of the day I am now at that corner which is the even- 
ing. First in the flowers of this plot of the garden I must count the 
tea-table. The wash is had — I must count that, for the laving of water 
is delicious to hands and face, and why overlook a fine sensation? 
The dust of the work-place is done away. It is a refreshed body that 
comes to more refreshment at the table. Thereupon here again is a 
good lusty welcome for the food, and a right keen gusto of it — which 
I count for the third time in my garden of a day; and if it were the 
tenth time, I would count it as readily, for it is a fine thing. Yea, 
and every flavor, every sweet taste, every spice, and a wholesome staple 
like bread, and daintiness of creams and fruits, I will count, and I take 
each one with a thought that by no means I would miss it, and I am 
all but ready to count each one again because I miss it not, but have 
it. At the evening meal I have all these things with a rich ease and 
leisure. For I have come to that place in the garden where a seat 
is made for dear loitering. At the morning meal all the work is ahead; 
it is a fresh time but an eager, the heart beats a roll-call to the ranks. 
At mid-day also I am at mid-work. But now at the evening meal, 
all is soft and gentle, unurged. unhastened. Truly I must count that, 
for 'tis a fine pleasure. And I know not but this ease makes a com- 
pound with every taste and flavor at the table — for what fine tincture 
of sense can be had fairly if it stay not on the tongue a little? There- 
fore I must count the leisure and flavors twice, once for themselves 
and once in the compound of them. Now this deliciousness of flavors 
and ease is had under a lamp — which is to be counted. For the lamp, 
on the table, or hanging above, gives the faces a necromantic bloom, 
a ruby and topaz tinting, with long and streaming shadows. Yea, 
I have looked about often and carried my eyes from face to face to 
see their beauty. For there is one beauty in a face by sunlight and 
another by star light, and another under the lamp, and one beauty 
differs from another beauty in glory. I must count every one of the 
faces if any one, as I look from one to another — so many blooms, so 
many pleasures unto me. Each one drops into me a single and a dif- 
ferent delight. 

Then comes conversation, which hovers around ease and a lamp like 
a night-flying moth, winged, downy, fringed, superb. But this I must 
count more than one, for 'tis a very array of pleasures; if I count aright, 
I must number every good thought in the body of the subject, and 



15 

€very spangle of wit on the garment of it. And truly I would count 
very happily the talk of the young persons, for it is wondrously en- 
tertaining to me the while I listen without checking it, and smile 
within when I may not smile without. Often it raises tender thoughts 
in me and I am nigh to tears while they laugh. When the talk is 
•wise as well as youthful, as often it is, then it is a very lovely wisdom; 
for there is an agedness that sits as fairly on the lip of youth as youth- 
fulness sits on the brow of age. 'Tis a pleasure to be counted also 
when I can set going the talk as I will, and lead it; and 'tis my own 
lack if I cannot do this, for Plato says well, and it is wondrous true 
of the young, that "all men, well questioned, answer well.'* 

After the tea-table, I must count the lamp-table; and on it every 
book counts one, and every print or picture; and the game also, un- 
less I must count it as many times as it has players. This indeed I 
will do of the reading aloud — I mean it must be counted once for every 
hearer; for each of them has a look, a manner, an attention, an answer 
of his own, and the shower of my pleasures is the number of these 
drops, which break the lamplight into bows of colors. I must count 
the school lessons of the children; for I find it a good tap of pleasure 
on my head to betake me to Virgil again with my boy, and to such 
like green arbors of my youth. Then comes the "good-night" of each; 
and every sweet act, gentle look and blessing counts one. And 'tis 
well to pause on each long enough to count it fairly; for they seem 
wonderful blisses if we hold them but still a little, but they go swiftly 
past. 

Then by my fire I sit (and good sooth, I must count my open fire 
one) and fall to a dream, to a hope, to a forelook mayhap, but most to 
a backward look; and this will have some joy; for who does altogether 
ill? and some reproach, for who does altogether well? and some pain, 
for who has not lost somewhat or has not holy, sorrowful secrets? 
But I am very sure that if, the day through, we have counted the 
blissful things, we shall find the back-look joyful; nay, it is then, as 
Richter says, "the only Paradise out of which we cannot be driven." 

Now come the late hours of night. Yet all the day is present, noth- 
ing is dead. With all the day about me, yea, wrapped in it, I stretch 
me on my bed — a wondrous bliss. What a marvel, the sense of un- 
compounded rest! More blissful than wonderful, and again the won- 
der greater than the bliss; for so do sleepy peace and wakeful emo- 
tions strive awhile within me, when I lie down and feel the first full, 
blissful stretch of rest. Then thoughts come awhile; and indeed thoughts! 



1(5 

Yea, never the day with all its light can breed them — knowledge, un- 
derstanding, sight, divination! A poet says the dead of night is the 
noon of thought. And again, ''Wisdom mounts her zenith with the 
stars." Another asks, "Why the night wakes in us warmer love? Is 
it because we feel in us the press of helplessness? Or are we lifted, 
being withdrawn from clamor — withdrawn to shades where naught is 
left for soul but soul?" Then on our beds come solemn thoughts, 
which have their bliss. For what rill of joy is there that runs not into 
a solemn sea? Then begin we to fall asleep, and this is bliss. First 
rises the sense of safety. Then that sense sinks in its own peace and 
fades with all other thoughts — begins again to glow — fades again, and 
more; and so sleep comes. Blissful was its coming on; more blissful 
its deepening; most joyful the sense of safety from which I sink away. 
And blest am I if the last bliss and flower of the garden-day which 
I count be this, that I have had the grateful spirit to count all the 
others. 

XXXIX. Observe phrasing — the first and last lines of the 
octave similar, the second and seventh also balancing and un- 
paused, the lines between these balances variedly phrased, the 
fifth and sixth lines contrasting with the uniformity of the third 
and fourth. The long billows of the lines of the sestet mark 
and intone the change and progress of thought and the sacred 
imagery. 

XL. The long roll and extended phrasing of the first qua- 
train. The short enumerative phrasings, variedly ordered, of the 
second quatrain. The long, steady line-roll of the sestet marking 
both the return to the opening theme and the contrast of the 
peace and light of the reflections with the broken and jostling 
expression of the unhappy things. The same effect — constancy 
and peace — attends the identical rhymes. 

XLII. On this Sonnet I have received the following: 
"The first four lines make a vigorous picture, full of force and 
expression of great power. This is equal to Tf on the pinions 



17 

of terrific wind,' etc. It is a splendid simile where fit similies 
for the power of the sea are scarce. 'The plane on which they 
prance' is equally good and admirably sustains the foregoing. 
The vigor is maintained and the wild storminess of the sur- 
roundings suitably color the succeeding lines. 

"I am not sure of the last two lines; they do not seem to sum 
up. Above you contrast the steadiness of your love with the 
heaving waters and revert to it again in closing, I presume. 
There is a charm of word and movement in this Sonnet that 
makes me quite indifferent as to whether you have said exactly 
what you should or not, as the music of a song often tells the 
thought without the words." 

XLVI. Here are two differing views : 

"I am not taken with this and do not regard it as like you in 
thought or execution." On the other hand: 

"I think our friend is mistaken when he says 'this is not like 
you.' There is not a Sonnet in the whole collection more like 
you. Albeit the subject is not pleasing, I like it." 

LIV. The eighth line is measured thus: 

C I r •' I r J I r M r M •;! 

LX. What to say of this Sonnet I am not sure. 'Tis purely 
lucid, and the thought is true and worthy. The harmonies are 
very remarkable; for rhymes of two syllables are difficult enough 
and rare enough in the Sonnet in English, but three syllables, 
as in the octave here, almost are beyond attaining by the genius 
of our language, and hardly to be met at all. I cannot recall that 
ever I have met a Sonnet therewith, besides this one. With this 
I will only add two agreeing dissents from friends. One writes: 

"This seemed to me on first reading obscure in meaning and 
labored in form. After several careful readings its meaning 
grows clear, but there is nothing left in my mind after the last 
line is read but a certain feeling of cleverness." 



18 

Another says: "I need make no comment upon this. The 
thought is noble, but too deeply buried in the elaborate work of 
the frame. I admire the ingenious work, while I do not approve 
it as a Sonnet." 

LXI. One of my favorites, dear friends, as to form. In con- 
nection with the thought and in relation thereto I enjoy much 
the value of effect, as it seems to me, of the identical rhymes in 
the octave. But these are far exceeded by the peculiar beauty 
and force, in just this place and for just this thought, of the 
identical rhymes in the sestet. To me the effect of them is 
singularly strong, lovely and dignified; nor can I conceive any 
manner in which the canon against couplets in the Sonnet can 
be broken with more valid and beautiful exception than is done 
herein. To this, however, I will add remarks from two of you, 
which differ from me: 

"I am sorry you have put such a beautiful thought in a coat 
cut out of fashion. There is also a distinct loss of effect by re- 
peating in the sestet. The development of this is almost or 
quite Shakespearian. If arrayed in the simple words of some 
of the others it would be one of the best." 

"The thought in this Sonnet is very beautiful; but I should 
not care for the Sonnet at all were it not for the last three lines." 

LXV. A friend says: 

"This is very beautiful and has gems of holy thought. The 
tenth line is an instance." Indeed I thank my kind friend for 
that. I love the voices of the creatures and they touch me 
deeply. 

LXVI, LXVII, LXVIII. To these New Year Sonnets for 
my people I will add here some New Year songs written for 
them: 



19 

NEW YEAR SONG. 

The days that come, 
The days that go, 
Fill up the season's flow 
And make what these do speak, in 
what are dumb. 

Wherefore so live 
That days that fly 
Lift voices to the sky 
To brim with praise the season 
fugitive. 

To Duty say, 
"Thou shalt be strong": 
To Love, "I will belong 
In duty and love to my beloved 
alway." 



HARMONY. 

Old Year, farewell! — But ere thou leave. 

Chime me a sweet memorial, 

A lovely lay; that I receive 

Comfort melodious, musical. 

Of memories made, that softly shall 

About me fall and to me cleave. 

New Year, come in! 'Tis soon anon 
Ye sit ye down with me to stay; 
But ere ye sit, sing out. sing on, 
A new and canty roundelay 
Of tones of hope, that spring to-day 
My heart and mind to ring upon. 

Eke both obeyed. New Year and Old; 
To hopes the New gave song complete. 
The other all his memories told: 
When lo! in harmony they meet, 
And make a duo-music sweet 
Of One Love that did both enfold. 



20 

HYMN. 

Now the New Year 
Holy and hale is here! 

But the old Year- 
It will not disappear! 

The new's begun, 

And yet the old's not done. 

Ever doth stay 

What once hath filled a Day. 

And what doth part 

That once hath filled a Heart? 

The Past doth lie 
Ambered in Memory; 

So, to Gems drest. 
To lie upon the Breast. 

How rich is He, 
God's great Divinity, 

Who brings the New, 
Yet the Old leaveth, too! 



THE NEW YEAR. 

New Year, come in! come in! 
Go out. Old Year! Old Year! 
And with thee disappear 
Thine every biting fear! 
But all thy joy remain, 
And all thy hope sustain 
The New Year! O, New Year, 
Come in, come in, come in! 

O, dear New Year, of thee 
Kind benefactions three 
I pray be done to me! 



21 

First, I ask to Have: 

To go not faint nor bare, 

But get in hand and have 

What I must eat and wear. 

Eke to possess in mind. 

When I with thought have striven, 

Lest, body fed, I find 

Mind famished. But most in heart 

To have the precious part, 

Which is, dear love me given. 

Next, I entreat to Know: 
Of what I have, to know 
From Whom it cometh so — 
Light, and the body's good. 
Food, water and wood; 
Joys of mind, that be 
More featly, reason's eye 
To see precious beauty; 
Of being loved the joy 
To natural girl and boy. 
Full reverently, full nearly. 
All faithfully, full dearly;— 
These joys gathered and stored 
In one thought. Him, the Lord, 
By whom around me poured. 

Last — most I ask to Give: 

More than to have or know, 

I pray I may bestow 

The meat doth make me live, 

Feeding body and soul 

In kind. What plenties roll 

To hand, shelter of cot 

Or hall, and raiment got 

Me round, sweet saps that spill 

From clouds, then grains that fill 

And crowd, — of these to give 

In measure as them I have 

I pray; or else not live, — 



22 

My soul shut up and barred, 
Mind mean, hand tight, heart hard 
With things that have been given 
In floods from out the heaven 
Of God. 

Eke what I know, 
O, let me give it so, 
And of my mind outpour 
A store. Thoughts that rise 
In aethers of the skies, 
And thence not down will drift 
To be with us, but lift 
Us up on pinions swift 
To them — Beauty that fills 
Valleys with running rills. 
That edges nooks of brooks 
With dew and flowers, that looks 
From every sea-shell's eye 
Of pink, that to the dry 
Meadow discourseth rain, 
That lifteth up the plain 
To be a hill, and where 
Sea-vapors wed with air 
Veils stars: and thoughts that draw 
The spirit forth in awe, — 
Meshes of infinite lights 
In infinite heavens — the nights 
More terrible and grand 
Than day; wonders of land 
Peopled with living things, 
Wonders of mystical wings 
Shuttling the air; the deep 
Of seas on fires that sleep 
Beneath: and thoughts of zest 
Of heart and pleasures blest, — 
Ecstatic sports and wiles 
Of tyrannous babes, and smiles 
Of patient age serene 
And still, and faith between 



28 



Dear lovers with their child, 

And sweet emotions mild 

Of maiden dreams, and bold 

Youth's leap that lays a hold 

On fame: and thoughts of Good 

Ruling where evil stood, 

That maketh lies to wane 

And surely die, and pain 

To beckon joy her way 

And flee; that through a day 

Of travail sore and long, 

Through murky night of strong 

Wrong and anguish, hath led 

The nations on and spread 

Pure peace: — These thoughts I pray, 

Having, to give, and say 

They all in deeps are stored 

Of one thought. Him, the Lord, 

From whom down on me poured. 

But more than thoughts or things, 

To give love's precious part! 

To lift some weary heart 

By love with fire and wings! 

To love a child till sings 

Its soul with artless art! 

All souls to love till start 

With love their mystical springs! 

Loving the more where more 

'Tis need to the lorn and lone; 

Rhyming a tender tone 

With deeds till joys run o'er; 

Bearing the Lord's dear own 

In love, as me He bore! 

New Year, come in! come in! 
Go out, Old Year! Old Year! 
And with thee disappear 
Thine every biting fear! 
Leave not a murmur here, 



24 



Nor misadventure drear; 
But all thy joy remain, 
And all thy hope sustain 
The New Year! O, New Year. 

Come in! 
For beauty, for duty, 

Come in! 
With never a fear, with serious cheer, 
Come in, come in, come in! 

HYMN. 

Shall the New Year bring Joy, 

Shall it bring Fear, 
Shall it bring Weal or Woe — 

'Tis sure 'tis here. 

But this is not more sure. 

Than that the vast 
To-come is filled with Him 

Who filled the Past. 

Father, we pray to Thee! 

And in our Heart 
Say not "Thou wast," "Wilt be,"— 

Only "Thou art." 

JOYFUL. 

Old Year, a sadness springs 

At parting from thee: 
Of all the songs heart sings, 

The contrite become me. 

Sad thought! the past is run: 

Howe'er I range it 
With penitent soul, 'tis done; — 

I can not change it. 

But ah! time's loving roll! 

Whate'er I make it 
The new may be; up. Soul! 

Faithfully take it. 



26 

New Year, a gladness springs 

In spirit from thee; 
Of all the songs heart sings, 

The joyful become me. 

Also I will add here three little "Pastorals" to my people, at 
New Year days: 

A Happy New Year! Men are saying this to each other continually 
at this season. 'Tis a good greeting, a kind wish, and hath a benevolent 
sincerity in it. But suppose we were saying to one another: Make a 
Happy New Year! Were not this a better greeting? Would it not 
search the soul belike? Could we say "Make a Happy New Year" many 
times, and hear it said unto us, without being cleft by it to our hearts 
and made to think much and consider our ways? Belike then we might 
consider more how truly we do make and build our happiness for our- 
selves. Nay, I know we are not mighty to do everything; yes, and 
that very much we are at each other's mercy, so that anyone may stab 
another with a sharp blade of unhappiness, because always we are 
near enough to one another for such a thrust, and there is no armor 
proof against it. Yet still it is amazing and heavenly how much we 
have the making of happiness for ourselves, how independent of chances 
we may be, how able to perform for ourselves and to keep a happy es- 
tate. No one hath studied this but he hath perceived it and grown 
large in it. And one thing is very sure, that as so very much we have 
power to make happiness for others, this is the same as having the 
power for ourselves. For it is certain that no one can be altogether 
unhappy while he is making another being happy. 

"With all thy getting, get understanding" — a good thought for the 
beginning of a New Year. Think — what if we should eat without un- 
derstanding? What would become of us if we had no knowledge of 
edibles, whether they would be good for us or bad, nourishing or 
worthless, or even noisome; and we should eat anything we found, 
without understanding? Truly very soon the body no longer would be 
a chariot for the spirit, but a wheezing, rattling vehicle, unsightly and 
unsteady, hardly pushed about, and soon a wreck. But because we 
can not see with our eyes the state of our soul as we can see the body's 
totterings or deformities, we conceive not so readily that to feed the 



26 

mind without understanding hath just as ugly and decrepit result as 
so to feed the body. For some things nourish the mind and give it 
true strength, which is power to see truly what things are around us, 
and to judge well; and some things have no food-stuflf in them, but 
are chaff and husk; and some things are poisons. Sad and pitiful and 
of small dignity is it to have no understanding in these matters, but 
to mistake the bran for the kernel, the chaff for the grain, the noi- 
some for the wholesome, and thereupon either starve or sicken th(» 
mind. Sad and dull is it to famish ourselves with husks and not know 
it, while we grow weaker and poorer in all true and fine insight, more 
basely ignorant, more infamously obstinate and dogmatical, and the 
mind moves with a great creaking and noise, and yet does nothing. 
Therefore, with all our getting, get we understanding of what things 
are really beautiful, ideal, noble, grandly useful and rich to supply the 
soul. 



The New Year! How may it be new? In what way and blissfully 
new? First, it may be new in doing over again, as we must in the 
blessedness of living, the things that are old, very old, as old as Life, 
or Time, or Eternity — the simplicity of duty, the things that we ought, 
the glories of thinking, the sanctities of worship, the virtue of loving, 
the tender fruits of helpfulness. These are the things as great and firm 
as the "everlasting hills." We can have a New Year new with no 
other things than these that also are the old, the everlasting. Secondly, 
the Year may be new in fulfilling these old and heavenly things a 
little better than ever before; duty, a little more faithfully; thought, 
worship, reverence, awe, more deeply and purely; love, more tenderly 
and unselfishly; "the helping hand," more constantly and with a dearer 
fellowship. 

Truly, how great the New Year may be! to do in it the everlasting 
things again and again, yet a little more nobly and blissfully than 
ever before. 



LXX. This Sonnet was sung in the morning when just I 
had arisen. The new day and the white draperies around me 
suddenly became an image, a portrait, a presence to the mind's 
eye; and the mind's ear partook, discerning a singing in the 
"inward silences." The Sonnet has three parts: in the first 



27 

part I say there arises an inward music, hid and not to be made 
known; in the second, I say that the privacy of the music, so 
that it must be hid and cannot be uttered, is itself an increase 
of the music; in the third, I say that my wish to sing it forth if 
it were possible, adds still another measure of music. 

LXXI, LXXII, LXXIIL "Grappled to my soul with hooks 
of steel;" which are senses, whereunto she is beautiful and de- 
lightful; memories, wherein she is sacred; thoughts, wherein she 
is comrade, fellow-working. 

LXXVII. You will hear the harmonies in the first and third 
accents in each line. Compare note on XIV. 

LXXXII. It was on a very radiant summer Sunday morning 
that this sonnet was given to me. The sky was of that deep, 
luminous blue which is so glorious in the heavens. No mist 
or vapor obscured or veiled the color, these exhalations being 
all gathered into masses of shining-white cloud, ample, yet not 
enough to qualify, but only to contrast, the blue. I was strolling 
slowly, being bound for a friend's home, and therefore happy, and 
thence to a mail-station where I knew a letter from another 
friend was awaiting me, and therefore happy again. Then ap- 
peared the little child clad all in bright crimson. Being glad, 
and ready for any bright seizure, the color and the little wearer 
thereof made room for themselves in eye and heart against the 
over-blue of the sky. This Sonnet is in four parts. The first 
part, in four and a half lines, mentions, with some contrast, the 
blue sky, the red gown, the child. The second, in three lines, 
contrasts the red against the blue, and the child against the 
whole of Nature. In the third, the first tercet, the unfathom- 
ableness of the blue space and the child-soul are brought to- 
gether. The fourth part, in the second tercet, comes into awe 



before the picture and the presence of Love. The first quatrain 
encroaches on and seizes a small portion of the second; but this 
is no ill liberty if the thought and manner of the shortened sec- 
ond quatrain be firm and worthy enough to balance the increased 
length of the opening; of which you, kind friend, will judge. But 
I would not end the encroachment with end of the fifth, be- 
cause I think the harmonies should avoid a stopping couplet any- 
where. The twelfth line is measured thus: 

f --U M'CMf 'If I 

The last line thus: 

H \ r \r Ir Mr M f I 

LXXXV. My friend says: "I do not like this Sonnet in 
substance or result. The work is well done and pleasing to 
the ear, but not worthy your pen. The second line easily be- 
comes a sneer, which the dignity of your other poems forbids. 
No, this is not worthy of you at all." Mayhap my friend is 
right and the Sonnet worthy neither of me nor of any one. Yet 
I must disclaim any intent to sneer. That line is meant to be a 
plain aversion to prettiness in verse and to tlie notion that the 
poet, with his eye "in a fine phrensy rolling," must await some 
agitating emotion, instead of seeking wild flowers like a botanist. 

XC. About this Sonnet I have received the following affec- 
tionate judgment: "Perfectly delightful. How natural and 
simple. Here is one of your best. You will never excel this in 
exquisite expression. Charming it is, indeed. The plain form 
of Sonnet is best, and you have here been more than fortunate 
in selection. The music is a fit accompaniment to so sweet a 
song. If I put a hand to it at all I should change 'unsedulous.' 
It is not in keeping with the balance, and mars the line. It is 



29 

not poetical. Substitute two simple words and this is a flawless 
gem." 

In the eleventh line I first wrote "unsedulous" where "re- 
signed" now stands. 

• 
XCII, XCIII. Rachel Frazier, Ruth Deering, my twin Kirls. 

See also Cameo XXIX. What can I say fittingly of these, my 
fond playmates, now becoming more than playmates — my 
cheerers, comrades, friends, advisers — yet playmates still! For 
with them I am "a. boy again just for to-night" — unless indeed 
they say that my whimsies and pranks shun day no more than 
evening. They are such rainy girls — for they belong out-doors, 
and they draw others and me in-doors and patter their domestic 
fancies on the floors while the rain makes music on the roofs. 
They swim, skate, play ball, ride wheels, ride horses, take long 
walks, row boats, and have no fear of stormy waters — and if 
there be aught else to do out-doors I am sure they do it, 
though I can think of naught more at this moment. They sing, 
and make music with instrument, and dance, and are good actors 
in good plays, and spread feasts — and if there be aught more 
to be done merrily in-doors which I recall not at this thinking 
I am sure they do it. Cabot says — by my memory, not having 
the place by me — he thinks no one ever saw Emerson run. 'Tis 
a question whether the adorable sage would not or could not. 
Methinks, as I remember that long, quaint form of short curves 
and corners, the appearance of him running, or in attempt 
thereof, were fantastical, not to say of that manner of surprise 
which is comedy. But I must run and skip and prance and 
otherwise disport me by reason of my girls; and methinks if the 
Concord Seer once unwarily had admitted them to live under 
roof with him, 'tis most certain that either they would have lim- 
bered him or he would have trammeled them, or both would 
have "been better strangers." For myself I can sit in corner a 



80 

long time — not "unregarded age in corners thrown," for my 
two are most sweet friends of me — observing with a still de- 
light their sports; but on occasion I lack no suppleness of heart 
nor of obedient limb to entertain a frolic. I bethink me at 
this moment of a late hour one party-evening when an old fash- 
ioned reel was proposed, and one of my two, with ^ young 
visitor so much and so affectionately at my house that often I 
call her my third (Cameo XXIII), made a race to me for part- 
ner. Ha! Equal that honor if you can, ye philosophers who 
never run. Verily, I am ready to count it the better dignity 
and no little decoration, and am willing to be so much of a Mal- 
volio as not to be "born great" nor to "achieve greatness" if 
I can have that manner of "greatness thrust upon" me. 
Here I will add some other songs of mine to my twain : 

TO MY RACHEL. 

I hail thy sacred natal day, 
My dear and good and loving Rae. 
The sky is fair, the wind at rest, 
The earth in summer robes is drest, 
And e'en the light seems still more blest 
Since it my Rachel's brow hath pressed; 
And more than light, my daughter's face 
Illumines all my heart apace. 
Be blest to you another year, 
My gentle one, my sweet and dear! 
And O, as fast the hours roll by, 
I pray with all my heart that I 
To you as richly good may be 
As every hour you are to me. 
But what is this? Not one alone, 
But two, a birth-day song must own? 
Ah! Lovely two! Ah, precious twain! 
Almost ye fill my heart with pain, 
So filled with thankful love 'tis prest. 
Ye are such joy, ye are such rest! 
June 8, 1893. 



31 



TO MY RUTH. 

I hail thy natal day, my Ruth; 
And as the years with dew of youth 
Do bathe you, all their drops above 
My heart exceeds with dew of love. 
May skies extend their softest hue 
Above your head, my dearie Rue! 
The day to welcome you is bright, 
And earth is happy if the sight 
Of your dear eyes upon it turn; 
But all the sun gives not such light 
To me, nor doth around me burn 
So blessedlj' as heart doth see 
My daughter shine. O may I be 
As good to you as you to me! 
But what is this? Not one alone. 
But two, a birth-day song must own? 
Ah! lovely two! Ah, precious twain! 
Almost ye fill my heart with pain, 
So full with thankful love 'tis prest, 
Ye are such joy, ye are such rest. 
June 8, 1893. 



THE DOUBLE STAR. 

A beam came in the window of my heart 

With morning light; 
A beam came in the window of my room, 

In mid of night. 
"A map, a map of the heavens," I said, 
"Bring me a map of the skies o'erhead. 
That I may know what light hath sped 

Hither in flight." 

Soon I beheld this night-light from the sky 
Was a double star; 

Two at its place, but one unto my sight 
From earth afar. 



32 

"Ah, ha!" quoth I, with merry mind, 
"At my heart's window shall I find 
'Tis a like star of double kind 

Leaps the day's bar?" 

Ay, blissfully so; joyful forthwith I see 

Two beams in one 
They were that passed the window of my heart 

With early sun: 
My twin girls sweet, my double light. 
One beam of love, but two-fold bright, 
Ye enter my heart and fill my sight 

When day's begun. 

Of the song that follows may I say that if you will read it 
aright you must recite the refrain thus: 

f-\t Mr Mr J I 

Ah! ha! middle aged! 

TWO. 

I have been young and now am old, 
Or if not old, yet middle-aged; 

Ah! ha! middle-aged! 
Yet never played I with the girls 
With such fantastic quips and querls, 

Such quiddities as bid it is 
With the sweet creatures to make bold, 
Although, once young, I now am old; 

Ah! ha! now am old! 

Conceive not that I play with all; 
I tell ye I am no such fool — 

Ah! ha! no such fool! 
No, no, I pick and choose, par-fay, 
With whom my merry tricks to play, 

My blandishments, outlandishments. 
And such fine antics as befall; 
But with my sweet select, not all — 

Ah! ha! no, not all. 



33 



I wage my fun with two, sweet two: 
The man's a dolt who has but one — 

Ah! ha! has but one! 
Alternate now I spar and prance, 
With playmates wild I square and dance. 

Fantastical, gymnastical. 
Till you would think the deil's to do 
Betwixt me and my romping two — 

Ah! ha! gamesome two! 

The one is tall; so is the other; 

And both are bright and very merry — 

Ah! ha! very merry! 
Like summer brooks all day they tattle, 
Not wisdom, yet a winsome prattle; 
And smilingly, beguilingly. 
The maids my crazy noddle bother. 
And one as much as eke the other — 

Ah! ha! eke the other. 

I steal behind and steal a kiss; 

They cry, "A plague!" but 'tis no matter— 

Ah! ha! 'tis no matter! 
If some one spy, I do not blink, 
For "Honi soit qui mal y think," 

While filially, familiarly 
They deign me that etherial bliss, 
A girl's serene and dainty kiss — 

Ah! ha! kindly kiss! 

These maids make havoc of my pocket; 
The shifty elves know where I'm soft — 

Ah! ha! where I'm soft — 
In heart than pocket even weaker: 
And so each cunning one is seeker, 

Right shiftily, and thriftily. 
For my small trash. Howe'er I lock it. 
They well know how to sound my pocket — 

Ah! ha! sound my pocket! 

One sitteth by me at the table, 
And duly do I entertain her— 

Ah! ha! entertain her — 



84 



With such a fond and witty banter, 

As doth, I know, sweet maid! enchant her; 

But viciously, maHciously, 
She says nor wit nor fact nor fable 
Have I, and flouts me at the table — 

Ah! ha! at the table! 

The other sitteth on the stool — 
Nay, both do that — of the piano — 

Ah! ha! the piano! 
And when they fain would play, I seize 'em 
By both the hands, and much displease 'em. 

Pah! 'twere silly if willy nilly 
To tinkling strings I yielded rule. 
I want the lassies oflf the stool — 

Ah! ha! off the stool! 

And yet, my dears, my dear twin dears, 
I must admit your tones are sweet — 

Ah me! passing sweet! 
And when I hear, at early night. 
Your touch of strings, your voices bright, 

Capricious so, delicious so. 
Go griefs and fears, come tender tears. 
The while I hark your music, dears — 

Ah me! dearest dears! 

And so my days flow on with peace. 
With heart of peace and sportive pleasure — 
Ah me! tender pleasure: 
My winsome two, my frolic two, 
O what without ye might I do? 

That morrow-full were sorrowful! 
Please God, my song I shall not cease. 
For you who fill my days with peace — 

Ah me! heart of peace! 



XCIV. Sidney H. Morse — one of the noblest, simplest, sin- 
cerest, and withal most gifted souls that ever my love hath 
been granted to single and possess — a man of a pure and delicate 



36 

genius on whose sun-disk of purpose or hope there hath not 
been one spot of vulgar ambition. Courage marks him. He 
is a great lover and comrade of young people, and especially I 
never saw a boy of any degree or nature or age who could with- 
stand his peculiar fascination. They all troop to him, the edu- 
cated, the ignorant, the high, the low, the unhappy, the fortu- 
nate, the poor, the rich — all alike. As a portrait sculptor, his 
faces and poses are grand and living, partaking equally of his 
subject and of himself. I knew him young first; now he is old, 
and a very picture of manly physical beauty, with his strong 
form, his long gray hair sweeping over his nobly arched head to 
his shoulders, his slow, half-observant, half-meditative gait, his 
picturesque slouched hat. We write litttle, but "the understand- 
ing is sweet." 

XCV, XCVI, XCVII. Horace H. Badger. My love for- 
bids, and yet justice urges, that I should write much, lest I say 
not enough for truth and yet too much for the right reverence 
of privacy and reserve. I know no man more ideal to me. His 
frame, look, carriage, are dignity, power, peace, sweetness. An 
artist soul, brimming with music, poetry, color and form — where- 
in his hand hath skill like to his mind's love. A lovely home, 
filled with affection and restfulness. Sonnets XCVI and XCVH 
came of some sudden sights of the gentle light of his counte- 
nance when I knew he was carrying very heavy burdens. 

XCVni. Lowell Blake Mason, the youngest child of Sen- 
ator William E. Mason — a boy of princely form and beauty. My 
friends for many heart-filling years his parents have been. The 
Senator has made his home radiant with domestic soft light and 
beauty, despite all the exacting cares of public life; and I know 
no sweeter, gentler intelligence among women than my name- 
sake's mother. 



36 

XCIX. J. Franklin Hughes. My true and always fellow- 
working friend. I can not speak truly of what I have done in 
the pulpit, but only of what we have done, such eloquence and 
religion hath he discoursed from our grand organ (Sonnets C^ 
CI) before it was burned. Often we wrought together in a ser- 
mon, his music making a part of it; for often I made place for 
organ and song to illustrate or enforce what I was saying, and 
then continued my discourse. O friend, fine musician, delicate 
composer, where or how now can be those musical fellow-dis- 
coursings, those readings with thy true music composed to en- 
rich and enhance the text and my rendering thereof — ^whence 
any more the "Water Babies" gloriously colored with thy master- 
music both of organ and vocal? Where be these things now? 
Those days are gone, and return not. Even the grand organ 
hath ceased to be — the young voices are scattered. But there 
is a chamber of memory and experiences in me which your 
music fills evermore. 

As I have said, my friend discoursed music for part of many 
a sermon; and I scrupled not to hand him bits of manuscript 
even on a Sunday morning when he arrived at church, know- 
ing that he would supply the music richly at the moment, where 
I had marked the places for it. As an example I will give here 
what I put into his hand thus suddenly one Harvest Sunday,, 
with designated places for music, arranged so as to have the or- 
gan parts make portions of the true rhythms of the whole: 



Noah came forth upon the mountain 

Where the ark had landed. 
Even on the height of Ararat 

Where the cumbrous vessel stranded, 
And on the bare peak sat. 
Below, as if from hilly fountain, 
Through valleys yet the v^^aters poured, 
In deep gulfs roared; 



37 

And rushed in swirls, and glided 

Down slopes to meet the seas 
That rose as the rainy flood subsided. 

Prostrate on his knees, 
The patriarch on the waters gazed, 
Awed and amazed. 

Then gathered his saved around 
On the small space of ground 
That was emerged; and Noah prayed. 
While still the watery skies, 
Full yet of murky dies, 
Shook overhead. 

And he petition made 

To God, and thus he said, 

While a strange music spread 

Among the clouds, spread wide, and fell. 

And caught his words up on its swell: 

Lord, O Mighty Lord, 
Thou hast fulfilled thy word! 

Thou didst command; the floods came down; 
Thou hast beheld the earth and every creature drown. 
Beneath thy wrath of waters. Frown 
No longer, Lord; a sign 

1 pray that Love divine 

No more will whelm his creatures. 

And the Lord spake and said, 

"I grant the sign, I bend it o'er thy head. 

Noah, look upward! Lo! 

In heaven I set my bow." 

And with the mandate sang 

The angels, and outsprang 

The prismatic bend 

Over the sky from end to end, 

And the sudden sun flashed 

Through the last drops of rain, 



38 



And on the dun clouds splashed ■ 

A splendid various stain 

Of colors. But Noah prayed, 

Entreaty made 

Again, and said — 

"O Lord, O Mighty Lord, 

Thou hast fulfilled thy word; 

Thou didst command, the floods effaced 

All living things, the earth is stripped and all is waste. 

Whence, Lord, shall food be gathered? Haste 

Thy goodness. Lord; a sign 

I pray; show Love divine 

Will feed his creatures." 

And the Lord answering said, 

"I grant thy prayer; my bow to bits I shred; 

Noah, look downward! Lo! 

O'er earth I crumb the bow!" 

And with the action sang 

Seraphs, and on earth sprang 

Bright shoots and the sown pieces swarmed 

Through the soil razed by rain; 

And when the fruits were formed. 

Each had a rainbow stain 

Of colors. So came the fruits on earth 

Out of the ooze and dearth 

Of waters; so came 

Their colors, bits of flame 

Of the rainbow, seeded and strewn 

In the earth, to glow and be known 

In the gold, red, purple and green 

In fruits and harvest seen. 



CII. Mary L. Lord. My dearly beloved friend these many 
years. Her intellectual desire is noble, and her heart as constant 
and as fervent as her mind. She is absolutely trusted by who- 
soever knows her at all. In the letter that begins this volume 



39 

I have referred several times to the long table. She always hath 
sat at it. For ten years and more she hath been one of the 
circle around it, always in her place, which is at my right hand, 
and barely one or two meetings absent during all the years. 
She listens intently, broods deeply, speaks little. Commonly 
her thoughts must be invited into speech; when spoken, they 
are wisdom and sincerity. With the constancy which marks her 
in all things, she was one of a small company whom I led in 
some studies extending over eight successive years — studies of 
the seven great teachers. When we had finished our study of 
the Parsee faith and scriptures in twenty lessons, I asked each of 
the company in turn what the conscious mental result was. Her 
answer was, "I think if I should go to Bombay and enter the 
Parsee temple there, I should not feel like a stranger in it, nor 
alien to the faith." Around the long table for one exercise I 
chose a sonnet of Wordsworth, reduced its substance and logic 
to a prose statement, then required from each one a sonnet 
based on that statement, and finally compared the sonnets with 
Wordsworth's. The Sonnet chosen from Wordsworth was the 
one beginning, "Where lies the land to which yon ship must 
go?"— XXXIII. of Part First of the Miscellaneous Sonnets. 
Some of the Sonnets offered had much merit either in whole or 
in some lines or expressions. Mary Lord's, one of the best, and 
very beautiful, I will give here: 



Full winged, with flags appareling the air 
The ship sets forth. The wandering bird is blest 
With Heaven's regard; beneath what star will rest 
Man-given wings? The ship must leave our care. 
Yet willing winds her pinions bright upbear 
And lapping waves touch tenderly her breast; 
The wide horizon opes at her behest, 
All climes her home — the sea her thoroughfare. 



40 



When holy pilgrims go their love to spend 

On shrine of saint, though shriven by vows, they start 

Sped by our hopes, tears on our prayer attend: 

So now in spite of faith, with fearful heart 

We wave adieu and wonder what the end! 

Will joy await our days who now do part? 



Of this my friend, whose bond of dear friendship unto me is 
equally hallowed by her character and by time, who is forever 
one of the most blessed and dear potencies in my life, see also 
Cameo XXVIII. This was written when I was leaving my 
ministry to the church of which she was a member. Thing's 
then she said and looked and wrote and did in those sad days, 
revealed her lovely heart and mind to me in ways and to dear 
deeps the which with all my seeing I had not seen before. 

cm. Clara H. Mahony. My friend hath wide nature, en- 
compassing heart and endless devotion, with many graces; but 
if I must try to phrase her great gift, I should say it is radiance. 
Every one is happy where she is. She has friends both many 
and notable. One who loves her may be equally proud of 
what she is, what she does, and what her friends conceive of 
her. She is the one other (see Sonnet CII.) who during all the 
studies around the long table barely hath been absent from one 
session these many and dear years. Of this Sonnet one writes 
me, "She never had a better portrait. I regard it as quite won- 
derful that you could catch a beauty which is action and pen it 
in fixed words." The italics are mine. See also the Dedication 
and Cameo XXXIV. 

CIV. Myra Perkins. Sister of Clara Mahony (CIII.) A 
lovely character. A woman friend of her said to me, "She is a 
bit of heaven." She is a musician. It is lovely rest to sit 



41 

dreamily and hear her play from Mozart. And if thereby a 
tired brain be lulled into a slumber, she will say it was her in- 
tention. Her intelligence is rare, quick, generous, logical ; poet- 
ical, too. Her thoughts fly so that she drops one sentence 
to begin another — a curious and fascinating trait, which has 
hewed the Sonnet to itself. It never leaves her meaning ob- 
scure. For some years I have been companion with her in 
French reading, and those hours are rich and charming to me, 
full of excursions of thought and endued with potency of com- 
panionship. She hath that fine combining of powers which is 
so excellent both for beauty and for efhciency, namely, wisdom 
and devotion equal. 

CV. Mary L. Perkins. The venerable mother of Clara Ma- 
hony and Myra Perkins (CHI. CIV.) I count her consideration 
among the greater honors of my life. She heads with a stately 
but also affectionate presence a household wherein I gratefully 
have found always for me peace and light. 

CVI. SiLVANus Smith and Judith W., husband and wife. 
Their home is full of thoughts. It was the dearest of all Boston 
homes to me, except one, (Sonnet CVII), during my ministry 
in that city, and since then, these many long years, has been still 
a home of love and of inspiring mental vitality to me whenever — 
now sadly long since — I could visit it. The freshness, the vigor 
of life, the world-wide interest, the stream of ideas in that house, 
make it like a sea and the breezes thereof — the ocean which they 
love. What sea-folk they are — ship-builders and sailors! I 
would trust me in any gale with them, any rage of the elements 
at sea or war of thoughts in cities. The Sonnet sings their 
golden wedding. 



42 

CVII. Matilda Goddard. Of this beloved, glorious, illum- 
inating friend I will write no more here. See my "More Than 
Kin," pp. 204-208. Yet I would write if I could find me words 
as I would. For more even than my love I would like to utter 
fitly my marveling and my reverence. 'Tis woefully long since I 
have looked on that revered face, and sat within the visible glory 
of her love and her supreme life- lore. And yet, I am never 
beyond the circle of her spiritual effluence. 

CVIII. LiciNEA E. Hilton. "All of the personal sonnets are 
very beautiful, but none quite so beautiful as this" — so writes me 
a long-time and noble friend. A beautiful, queenly, loving 
woman was she whose loving-kindness wrought this Sonnet 
in me. I went to her brother's house, where Death had 
snatched suddenly two rare children, and she opened the 
door. Then, speaking not, she bent down from the thresh- 
old and gave me the dignity and sweetness of that bestowal. It 
was a decoration. I rejoice that in this Sonnet my "step is so far 
masterful" (as in daily walk it is) to speak of the honor as that 
there is no flaw of form in it, no couplet nor any such depreca- 
tion, and the line, as Milton requires, is "variously drawn out into 
the next." The noble, royal woman, whose strength hath bent 
under many sorrows, hath gone now from the region of my ken. 
I can see her but rarely; but still I feel that honor, that tender 
bestowal and high decoration, as if just now imparted. Some 
years afterward I wrote to her of it, and she answered with a 
lovely grace expressing surprise that her "so simple act" could 
have been so much to me. Neither now knows she nor can I 
show the filial love I bear her. I never can enter her presence 
without an emotion which partakes of religion. 

CIX. M. EsTELLA Austin, my secretary once, my friend 
always, and in both offices a power, counsel, light. She was 



48 

devout, and very brave. She deserves that I should celebrate in 
ways beyond me and too great for me the faithfulness and riches 
of her service to me, the strength of her spirit, her fine intelli- 
gence, her delicate genius for expression, her tireless industry, 
her loving watchfulness. All these qualities she poured around 
me without measure and without ceasing. Leaving me at last 
for other duties, she left me two great possessions, a reverential 
affection and a profound gratefulness; also a new force andi 
strength withal, for she was of such quality that she was to me 
like the earth to Antaeus — to lean on her aid was to grow 
stronger. I can turn nowhither in my studies, among my notes, 
my books, but I find the marks of her once audible and visible 
counsel, now continuing to the mind's eye and ear. Her letters 
gave me often texts for my sermons, or fine eloquences to quote 
in them, and she was full of topics for discourse which she sug- 
gested continually. In a letter to me she said, "May this be a 
day of blessings to you, sweet content with what is." This I 
made the text for a sermon entitled, "At Peace with Things.*' 
She was cheer in very essence. "Let us," she wrote me once, 
"be too busy burnishing the moments to be concerned with com- 
ing difficulties." She is a pure quietness, seeking side seats and 
retirements, yet a pervasion of influence to one knowing her. 
See Cameos XXVL XXVIL For many years not a page did I 
print without her criticism and fellow-labor thereon and her /m- 
primatur — and always to the great benefit of it; and although I 
am finishing this book by these notes without her participancy 
because she hath gone to a distance and to other cares, yet she 
pondered the Sonnets for me, one by one, and many times over, 
and with such a fine judgment and delicate sense that without her 
I know not whither I might have wandered; which service I 
now acknowledge gratefully; and this acknowledgement is no 
less a happiness to me than a justice to her. Whether as friend 
of heart or benefactor of mind or stay of will, she was a presence 



44 

of power, and her approval was equally an ample reward and an 
assurance of worth. Her fellowship in work and her immense 
service to me were of those wonders of experience which make 
life grand. 

ex. Eva G. Wanzer. Of Quaker extraction. Her presence 
is pure peace. She is quietness, symmetry, reasonableness, gentle 
justice, steadfastness, patience and love. She neglects no duty, 
though small, and she fears none, though great or difficult. In 
my church she was my untiring fellow-worker in many ways 
for many years. Her thoughtfulness amounts to a vast inclu- 
sion. She pours herself around whatever she undertakes. She 
is faith, truth and devotion. To converse with her is courage, 
stay, purpose. Her smile is bright and her bearing is high and 
warm and strong with love. Cameo XXVH. 

CXI. CXII. Grace M. Curtis. O, lovely, noble, devout, 
loving woman, whose friendship unto me, like a glow in the sky 
unwaning for twenty years, hath been arched now over im- 
mortal seas! Never knew I more rare and delicate spirit, a 
heart more tender, a love more like a religion, a life more faithful 
amid sacred and hidden sorrows to the end. How her friends 
loved her! How her pupils followed her! How all persons 
wondered at her! She was a strenuous spirit, living a not much 
revealed life; when shown a little, it was like a deep of light 
and a soaring of flame. I have memories of her that bless me 
inexpressibly — great honors, dear recollection of a friend-love 
that knew no limits, and vouchsafements of revealment thereof 
that were like a bending of the heavens. She was very eloquent 
in thoughts. I listened, rapt, once while she described to me the 
office and ministry to her of one tree which she could see from her 
window. She worked intensely, and at last rent her delicate frame 
thereby and escaped. Her dress, her face, her voice, her manners 



45 

were her own and a little odd perhaps — touched with a sweet 
exclusiveness to her own soul — like no other's. She scouted the 
notion of my exchanging, and would not go to church on those 
occasions. It was in vain that I argued to her the duties of hos- 
pitalities, the value of another mind discoursing, etc. She 
answered that these points had no bearing on the question. It 
was not matter of hospitality nor other duties, nor of education, 
but of a relationship. "It is the same kind of distress to me," she 
said, "to see another in our pulpit, as if some one should assume 
my husband's place in the freedom of my house or my child's 
place by my side. If the angel Gabriel should come down to 
preach I would not let him have your place. He should have a 
place of his own. There I might hear him with pleasure or with 
patience, because without offense to a deep relationship." After 
she had vanished, Laura Wieser, a near friend unto me and now 
as near in spirit, though distant beyond ocean, and a great 
lover of our Grace Curtis, gave me a lovely picture of her, which 
long afterward became cause of the Sonnet CXII. 

Here will I add memory of Laura Wieser, for to speak of the 
two at once is as natural as to tell of breezes and tree tops or of 
violets and wood banks together. That lovely German is a 
very flame of music and poetry, of joy in every manner of elo- 
quence, of passion for delicate or exalted beauty, of a devout love 
of her friends, and of a singular reverence for any one who could 
do, say or think any beautiful thing. If I should sum up her 
manner of life in a word, I should call it rapture; and naught in 
her is more rapturous than her reverence. Over any intel- 
lectual or moral beauty that reverence falls in flakes, like the 
breaking from the atmosphere of something whiter and softer 
than snow and warmer than light. O ! my memories of her foot- 
step on the stairway, lighter than thoughts, yet as forecasting as 
they, and then of the felt presence at the door, and then the 
knock like a praying of forgiveness for coming, and then the 



46 

gentle voice excusing the almost as gentle tap, lest some coy 
sprite of thought had been startled away by the scarce audible 
sound! Her reverence is a lovely passion, a religion. She is 
utterly impatient in her own gentle, loving, forgiving way, of 
the popular taste for common forms and glinting shallowness, 
and she bewails without ceasing the neglect suffered by her 
heroes of pen or song or harmony. Yet not for their sakes ; she 
would disdain to grieve much for them; but for the people so 
blind and deaf to what truly is beautiful. 

Lovely, poetic, musical, devout twain, to whom both my soul 
by each is moved the more, whose reverence for any advent of 
beauty lifted their daily lives into a communicating fervency! 

CXIII. Emerson Blake Bushnell, my god-child in the middle 
name, son of Rev. Charles F. Bushnell and Margaret Dreutlein. 
I never have seen the child. . The parents barely walked across 
my path beside it a little way, but left it the brighter and more 
sweetly and variously peopled. 

CXIV. Louisa L.Ware, daughter of William Ware and Mary 
Waterhouse. Of her, my friend and sister for thirty years, nay, 
now and ever, I must write a long, loving, grateful note; yet, 
how^soever long, short for what it is right and true and simply 
faithful that I should say of her. I remember w^ell the first 
time I saw her, and her every look and motion. It took me 
not long to grow into a deep and reverential love of her which 
never has left me, having become and continued the exaltation 
of every faculty of me. I was a raw youth of seventeen years 
of age, just arrived at College, received by her lovely mother 
into her home. First she took me into as loving and faithful a 
heart as ever beat, and then she took me in hand to instruct and 
mold me by her experience, studies, thoughts. She was a beau- 
tiful player of the piano, with a brilliant and yet tender style. 
I handled the violin in those days, and we used to play to- 



47 

gether by hours daily. But she would have none of the music 
which was the best I had known. "Arrangements? No, for- 
sooth. Nothing but original compositions for the instruments." 
So was I led into the mysterious and glorious world of the 
sonata music of the great masters, and chiefly we delighted to- 
gether in Mozart. I had a voice then too — not great, but worth 
some exercise. "What! sing by rote?" said she; "O never; you 
must read." So she taught me how to read the notes with 
voice as already I could with instrument, and we, with her sister, 
(CXVI) used to sing old-fashioned sweet ditties, of winter even- 
ings, or on the porch late into summer nights. Nor have I 
ceased to feel, as if it were but yesterday, the splendid Christmas 
eve when she, the lover of music, the devout, the lovely, the 
gentle, the cultivated and accomplished, sat with me in the Col- 
lege chapel while the "Venite, adoremus" rose and flooded all 
the spires and shadows of the "dim, religious light." At that 
time the love of poetry had not been born in me. I delighted 
in argument, speculation, logic and science. She said, "You 
must add the poets, else will you never be balanced and happy." 
Thereupon to awake me to the poets she repeated to me from 
memory all the first book of Cowper's "Task." I was enchanted. 
Straightway I obtained a little pocket volume of the poem and 
carried it about with me a long time, reading rapt whenever I 
might have a wait of a few minutes in my walks and rides. This 
began a new life for me which hath lost no color to this hour; 
no, but gained and grown rich. Then said she to me, "You 
know nothing of the history of art; you must learn of it." Where- 
upon she began to talk to me regularly daily out of the treasures 
of her reading, bringing me along that luminous path, from 
the earliest Christian art adown the centuries. She led me also 
to botany, and roamed fields and woods with me when strength 
served, which alas! was but little, and taught me to use the mi- 
croscope, and she opened to me in myself a love and a knowl- 
edge of those sweet beings, the delicate wild flora, which hath 



48 

been a happy passion in me from that time. The yellow violet 
{viola pubescens^ is associated with her, for I first saw it in her 
hands and she led me to woods' banks of it. By her rich talk, 
faer insight, principles and life-lore, she gave me new thoughts, 
and tests of thought, new valuations of life and character, new 
measures of things, new conceptions of persons. Her being be- 
came indeed a law of my life, an influence immense, formative, 
endless; and unto this hour I often say to myself, on recogni- 
tion of some principle, persuasion, gentle bias or happiness of 
me, "That is Louisa within me." 

A trait of her which I must not forget to mention is her genius 
for nonsense. This is really a genius, and a rare one; and one, 
moreover, of lovely moral imports. For if, as Charles Lamb 
says, "he that hath no drachm of folly in his composition we 
may be very sure hath many pounds of much worse matter" 
(I quote from memory), then belike we may argue that the more 
of such fine nonsense as my friend's the more do gentle virtues 
inhabit. Her sayings and doings in that kind were original, 
racy, humorous, delicate, affectionate, as finely limited in preva- 
lence as in quality, altogether delightful, and as domestic as the 
variable flame of a hearth-fire. Those frisks and gambols of 
soul are dear to my memory and not inconsistent with a special 
sacredness of thought and feeling wherein the mystery that 
hath received her hath become a garment for me. 

But it was my great happiness that I was not merely a recip- 
iency. I could give as well as receive, though not in so many 
ways. In all the ways that I could I did — with my physical 
strength, with my tone of mind so different from her own and 
therefore valuable to her, and with my love; and so well did I 
in such ways that she said I was a constant sunshine over her 
life — O honor more than bay-wreaths! But most notably to 
myself could I and did I give to her in one great way. Wc 
were born in the same household of religious faith — a happy 
fact; but she belonged to an elder, supernatural branch of it, 



49 

founding in historical miracles and scriptures; and I, although 
having like traditions, by a certain main force, slowly, like the 
motion of a screw of very fine thread, had lifted me away from 
that condition into the pure simplicity of Natural Religion. 
This had been done by much and long reading, thinking, com- 
paring, reasoning, and especially by long study of the laws of 
human testimony and historical evidence and of the philosophy 
of the narratives called miracles. In this field I was as much 
my beloved friend's superior as in everything else she was 
above me. Ah! my talks to her, my remonstrances against the 
mere traditions which humbly she called faith, my unceasing 
argument, my expositions of the breadth and glory of the Nat- 
ural in Religion! So was it for many years — and I supposed 
all my explications and fervors of thought had availed not to my 
wish. But one day, one golden, glorious day, a winter day 
wherein the earth was covered with snow, not new, but still 
all clean and settled to a compacted, gleaming whiteness, I came 
to her presence and sat with her in an upper room, windowed 
southward, and flooded that morning with a sunlight so singu- 
larly resplendent — at least so it seemed to me and so I remem- 
ber it — as "never was on sea or land" before. I talked awhile, 
and she plied her needle. Then suddenly — what I said or v/hat 
tone opened the flood-gates I know not — she began to speak^ 
with a radiance like to the sunlight, of the deeps, joy, faith and 
stay of simple Natural Religion. With fervor and a devout hap- 
piness she spoke. At last she said, "You have taught me, you 
have led me! For many years I could not understand your 
words, and your reasons were sealed up from me. But I never 
ceased to brood over your prophesyings. Suddenly all became 
clear; I understood, I knew, I entered into the spirit of it, and 
the experience was like a sudden burst of a vast light; and when 
so I understood, then everything was changed into a new mean- 
ing, and all life, the earth, history, all creatures and things were 
glorified and suffused with a new light like this splendid sun- 



60 

shine!" That was my one great gift to her — O blessed, joyful 
vouchsafement to me the light whereof within me "never goeth 
out!" 

But her love! What can I say of that? Volumes, that were 
pure beauty. What shall I? But little. Having set forth, 
though in this brief manner, the nature and soul of her, I will 
leave reverently to conception this utmost grace and power 
thereof. Her sweetness, tenderness, constancy, all -womanli- 
ness, are what I can speak of least, though adoring most. And 
especially of my own share in that divine fire of her being, to say 
much were like vaunting an extreme blessedness or election of 
Providence unto me, of which I should be humbly and sacredly 
silent. Yet will I offer a few words from her letters to siiow 
not her dignifying of me, but her own womanly soul of love. 
After a faithfulness of more than twenty-five years she wrote: 
"Never fear change in me. Sooner look to see the solid granite 
melt without cause before your eyes. You shall be at peace 
in my love, and therein find rest from every trouble that I can 
shield you from. For have you not been my more than brother 
for these long years! Forget not to be patient and loving. But 
let no tired boy write to me in the small hours. Better never 
write, and when I want to see you, I can go to your books. For 
how like are the writings of a sincere soul to the man himself! 
I have heard you say many a thing that I now see printed. To 
have the books at my side seems like sitting by you." From 
another letter: "How I do wish you could have put this book 
with your own hands into mine, and then I could have read to 
you from it, looking into your eyes the while. But no, 'twas 
not to be. In all your work I am the one who is never to be by 
— I, than whom no one cares more!" 

By my "work" in this letter she refers to my first books, which 
I had sent to her. Here gratefully and humbly I may mention her 
surprise and joy over those books, and especially the "Poems." 
She took them into mind and heart, read them, studied them 



51 

over and over and wrote me rapturous critical letters amrnuit- 
ing in all to no little of a volume, all forsooth for love of my writ- 
ings and chiefly of my songs; not for love of me, for she was 
critical truth itself, writing purely as she thought and felt, and 
— I may dare to say it, in right justice and respect unto her, 
even at risk of seeming to take honor to myself — she was critical 
knowledge and taste too, instructed by reading and study in 
six languages; not to be blinded or perverted by her affections. 
She always had viewed me only as a thinker. To express as well 
as argue and reason she thought was not given to me. Especially 
versing by me, and some early small endeavors therein, she 
frowned on. "6>, Beato mio,'" she said, "try not to write verse — 
'tis not given you^ confine yourself to honest prose — 'tis your 
nature. You can not sing — be not troubled by that fact — but ac- 
cept it — write good prose and be content." But when the 
"Poems" came to her hand, her heart turned to a very flame of 
gladness and she wrote me her letters of sacred fire. I will quote 
from the first one : 

"The book is full of rare thoughts, clothed with a beauty of ex- 
pression that I did not dream was in you — you who, I thought, 
had not that charm of graceful speech that makes one of the 
greatest attractions of poetry. * * * The faults of the book, 
say you? Wait yet; I can not see them now. * * * Xhe 
whole thing has moved me so, and set astir so many memories, 
that I can not think quite clearly yet, but only feel. Wait yet, and 
you shall have more. * * * And now I, who denied you the 
p>oet's name, who gave your gentle heart than pain, I, yes I, will 
lovingly, reverently lay the singer's robes upon your shoulders, 
and bid you be glad. I keep your poems in my heart of hearts." 

She thought me, nevertheless, too "lawless" and reproved me. 
She wrote: 

"You know I always found fault with your lawlessness in the 
matter of rhyme and meter. I find specimens of this scattered 
through your book; but as I know that it arises from no in- 



62 

dolence, no want of care, but is entirely intentional, being a legiti- 
mate outcome of your mode of thinking and of the rules you have 
laid down for yourself, and moreover springs from something 
fresh and original, I have felt it best to let that go without com- 
ment. But you constantly trouble my sense of harmony, and as 
you are a master of harmony when you choose so to be, I look on 
it as a blemish." 

I have altered my mind and practice on that point (as perhaps 
I have said sufficiently in the Letter that begins this volume), and 
think now my noble friend was right and saw more clearly than 
I did. It were joyful, if this book might rest in "the touch of a 
vanished hand," to hear from her that no longer I was offending 
the delicacy of her ear. 

Of one more point it is a right gratefulness to her that I should 
speak, namely, her view of my love songs. And if this I can not 
do without wearing another decoration from her, conceive, I 
pray you, how right and due and no more than respectful it is that 
humbly and obediently I should let her, the sincere and suffi- 
cient spirit, honor me if she will. She wrote, "The love poems 
are beautiful. Their tone is sublimated. They sing of such 
purity of thought that they are entrancing. Singing of love, 
you tread the upper regions till the love seems almost di- 
vorced from the person loved, and is in your being but a higher 
presence. But let this be — it is better so. It is the most delicate 
love-poetry I ever read, and therefore stands alone among the 
utterances of that feeling. Let it be so." 

And again, after reading a criticism of the book saying that 
the love poems were "sometimes cold," she wrote, "In a pre- 
vious letter I have spoken of the peculiar character of your 
poetry of love. It is so somewhat, so, as the critic says, 
'sometimes cold;' but on this head do not mind what the critics 
say. No one ever wrote such love poetry as yours. Love has 
been vulgarized, even in the hands of our best writers. And here 
you come, with thoughts equal to the best of them, and raise it 



53 

into the region of refined, exalted feeling which will exert a most 
beneficent influence. Go on in your own way and write as you 
have done on this theme at least." 

With this precious benediction — which now comes to me, in 
reading these letters, like her hand laid on my head, reaching 
down thereto from another sphere — I will end my confidences 
to you (as much as I could find heart to impart them) of what 
she was to me and said to me. lit at plures, October 2, 1890. 

I will add two delicate stanzas by her which have clung to my 
memory. She spoke to me once of the exceeding painfulness of 
losing a thought, which, having visited the mind, escapes, and 
leaves a mindfulness that some thought was there which can not 
be gotten again. The pain, she said, was like that of a loneness 
arising from the loss of very substance of ourselves. Afterward 
she gave me these verses, expressing this sentiment: 

Two little birds were telling 

Their loves in a leafy tree; 
Two little clouds were sailing 

Over a summer sea. 

I looked — the clouds had vanished, 

The birds far off had flown; 
My rising thought was banished, 

And I was left — alone. 

This sonnet refers to a request from her. I had sent her a writ- 
ing of mine, the book named "St. Solifer," wherein occurs a 
thought touching death. She wrote me that she desired me to 
make a sonnet of that thought; but she had vanished before I did 
so. The thought she desired versed was this: "Death is but the 
superscription of the unfinished and signifies that the same has 
gone on to be finished." This is treated in the next Sonnet, CXV. 
The fifth line of this Sonnet (CXIV) is measured thus: 






64 

I will add a song that I wrote to her long ago, for a New Year 
day. I had forgotten it, but came on it lately among my manu- 
scripts : 

bright New Year, 
Now you are here 

I can impart to you my mind: 
I pray you to my friend be very kind, 
And give her cheer. 

She is the best 

1 know — and lest 

Her gentle place you should not find, 
I pray you to my friend be very kind 
For my request. 

So brief you last, 

So quick and fast 
You do betake yourself along, 
You can not pick my pearl from all the throng 

Ere you be past. 

So I must tell — 

And listen well, 
That fondly you may find her out — 
What traits and looks she sweetly bears about 

Her like a spell. 

Deep in her face 

Mark well and trace 
A splendor of a pattern rare, 
A countenance where love, thought, pain and care 

Lend beauty grace. 

Brown golden hair, 

With sun-touch fair. 
Clusters about an even brow: 
Her eye is fire, then laughing, brimming now 

With dew love-rare. 



55 

And with all these, 

As true eye sees, 
Dv/elleth a strength that gives not o'er; 
She can protect, and in her true heart store, 

As well as please. 

O bright New Year, 

Say, do you hear 
All these, my signs? Then onward go, 
On her your sweetest sunshine fall, and blow 

Your breezes clear. 

Bid gentle night 

Be starry bright 
About her when the sun is low. 
And fold her in sweet sleep until the glow 

Of morning light. 

Let sun and shade 

Compact be made , - 

Upon her head descend to rest, 
And fill with tempered beams her loving breast. 

And never fade. 

She is so dear. 
To me so dear. 
You must be good to her. New Year. 

CXV. The following is the complete text of the thought 
which my friend asked me (See Note, CXIV.) to verse: "Who 
knows, exclaims he, that the Creator has yet ended any of 
these lower creatures? For they may go on and improve and un- 
fold hereafter — yea, even unto angels and archangels. For, he 
says (and I know not where perhaps anything finer has been said 
of death), death is but the concomitant of forms varying and im- 
perfect; for if instantly the creature of God had been created 
finished and perfect, he would have been unchangeable, and there 
would have been no death. Therefore, death is but the super- 
scription of the unfinished, and signifies that the same has gone 



56 

on to be finished." — St. Solifer, p. 78. The first Hne of this sonnet 
is measured thus: 

J 5 u t Mr i\: r I c c M r 

The thirteenth line has thirteen syllables, but nevertheless fills 
exactly the five measures of time. It is to be read with a 
syncopated movement at one place and with a measiire of three 
syllables, thus: 

55lr^5M JCClr c \tt II 

For a new race unto perfectness, fiery smitten. 

If the reader will see another and very beautiful line of thirteen 
syllables in five measures of time, treated with a rest at the third 
measure, you will find it in "Merchant of Venice," Act i. Scene 3, 
in Shylock's speech, beginning-, "O Father Abram!" 

CXVI. Mary H. Ware, sister of Louisa L. (CXIV). I have 
written no verse that is a more truthful portrait. She is a most 
devout heart of love and faithfulness, a mind widely stored, and a 
remarkable manner of wit well known to her near friends, wherein 
she gleams suddenly out of the soft shadows and silences of her 
thoughts. She says things so happily conceived or so tersely 
shaped or so perfectly expressed or so quaintly humorous, that 
they affect the memory like a stamp on wax — a clear and finely 
cut device which commands the eye and remains fixed also in its 
medium. She is an artist whose fancies done with the brush are 
very delicately beautiful. She is a great lover of the poets, and 
hath a strain of verse in her own soul, warm with love. After a 
never-to-be-forgotten visit of me to the sisters at Rindge, N. H., 
one beautiful summer — a precious three weeks of beauty and 
loving fellowship — when I had gone, Mary sent after me this 
song: 



67 

SONG OF THE BROOK. 

TO J. V. b. 

In the quiet vale below 
The busy mill-wheel turneth; 
Out of the silent wood 
The merry brook still runneth — 
Runneth the whole day long, 
Singing a low, sweet song, 
Of one who has come and gone, gone, 
Of one who has come and gone. 

All through the winter wild, 
While heavily falls the snow, 
The patient toilers bide 
In the quiet vale below. 
And safe in their icy bed 
The merry waters play, 
"Singing the same sweet song 
They sang on that summer day," 
Of one who had come and gone, gone. 
Of one who had come and gone. 

I sit by my winter fire. 
I watch the murmuring flame, 
That tells of the silent forest 
Whence the mighty oak tree came. 
And I seem to catch the message 
That it fain would strive to say, 
Of the merry brook that flows. 
Flows forever and aye. 
And still as it flows along 
"It singeth the same sweet song 
It sang on that summer day," 
Of one who had come and gone, gone. 
Who has gone, but not for aye. 

CXVII. M. Emma Powers. We disagree much, but still more 
we are true friends. She is absolute faithfulness. We write 
little. No matter. If we met not nor wrote for five hundred 
years, I should find her the same. My dear friend, over whose 



68 

worth and dearness to me a quarter of a century has spread its 
sky, I pray you be not ill-pleased with me for my Sonnet which 
yet you have never seen. I think you would forbid me to 
print it, or anything else, if I should ask leave. Therefore I 
will not ask leave. Besides, good sooth, I am no little wroth 
with you for not being more peaceable with what I love so much, 
to-wit, yourself. I would have you to know that my election 
always hath fallen on riches; or if not always, yet I insist on a 
fair frequency worthy of some reputation with you. I can find 
no fault with your choice of me in friendship — a high honor 
to me, and as undeviating for me as the sun in the heavens; 
but I would have you more tender to your friend's friend, I 
mean yourself. And I will tell you that twice and thrice and 
many times even unto this moment I have assuaged a weary 
thirst at the fountain of your religious spirit. 

CXVIII. Katharine L. Halpin — when her twin boys were born. 
The mother it has not been my fortune to know much, albeit 
very pleasantly and cheerfully, and once sacredly and sorrow- 
fully for ministry when her first-born "went to the majority." 
But the father hath been my dear and fast friend for many 
years of remarkable association and companionship, now some- 
what broken into by conditions adverse, but ever potentially the 
same and luminous in memory. Those were happy times, friend, 
when many and long talks we had in your office, or when I 
haunted your work-room, coat off, days at a time, busy with 
you and your workmen in the little art-works we have essayed 
together. Never-to-be-forgotten times! And many helps by 
them kept in my memory with tenderest gratefulness! A manly 
man is my friend, and of a fine intelligence and fine feeling, and 
a soul of natural religion, and a brave thinker. He was im- 
patient that my books, printed by him, met so little favor. "Write 
me some sketches," said he, "and I will issue them at my own 
wish and cost and try the public with them." And so I did; 



69 

and so he presented me with "St. SoHfer." For his sake I 
have done what never for myself I did; I mean I have grieved 
that the book fared no better than the others. 

Some engaging Sonnets hath this, my friend, Thomas P. Hal- 
pin, composed and sent to me. I will give here one lately re- 
ceived from him — a beautiful Sonnet, with a peculiar charm to 
my mind: 

Dear one, to thee mayhap it is a grief 

That irresponsive beats thy tender heart. 

Unwillingly unloving then thou art, 

And kind with thy reluctance to belief. 

Of all love's worth, the power to love is chief. 

Fair thou art made and canst inflict that smart, 

Unanswer'd love, while robbed of love's best part. 

Oh, riches filched, and cruel fate the thief ! 

Thou'rt so bereft that less my double loss. 

Thy love, my hope, wherein I lose thee twice; 

For hope 's foregone — it singeth not a morrow ! 

Yet love that hangs on answering love is dross 

Offered for gold! Oh, I will love thee thrice: 

For thy sweet self, thy fruitless will, thy sorrow. 

CXIX. Alice L. Taylor. Dost remember, thou dear, true 
friend of twenty years, that I never ceased to possess, hung on the 
walls of memory, the picture of thee in my first glimpse of thee? 
How little we have met during these many years! Yet what 
friends we have been! And at first, yea, and for long, I knew 
thee not in the riches of thy heart. But one memorable day 
when I visited you, I made some remark on the nature of love 
in friendship, and you answered quietly, "Yes, so is it between 
us two" — dost remember? And I looked at you with a wide 
surprise, and instantly knew both your fine grace and my well 
loving of you, which hath continued, and will; for I yield not 
even to you in point of constancy. And your letters — not many 
but heart-rich and mind-full! And your fresh spray of quota- 
tions from your stores of poesy-lore! And all these from the 
beginning, and now time hallowing them! 



60 

Line nine is measured thus : 

i I r TUJ'lr I r Mr 



CXX, CXXI. To what I have said in the notes to the public 
volume I will add only that I love dogs dearly, and I re-print 
this In Memoriam, April, 1885: 

All friends everywhere, especially pairs of friends who are 
closely united and have great joy in their mutual trust and af- 
fection, I apprise that I have just lost a friend. I loved him, 
and he deserved it. He loved me, and I hope I deserved it, 
though I have never thought I was as worthy for my advantages 
as he for his, for my friend was of a humbler station than I. 
Nevertheless we were much together. Such was his love and 
such his reverence for my stronger intelligence that simply to 
be near me seemed a dear satisfaction to him. And such was my 
well-deserved afifection and my reverence for his goodness and 
devotion, that I worked the better during long hours by day, 
or more often by night, for his quiet companionship in my 
study. Long and bright and communicative were the walks 
we had together. In body he was the stronger, swifter, more 
supple, and I used to watch with exhilaration, even when I could 
not share, the physical ecstacy of his existence. I had a little 
girl, a sweet, tender, winsome child, who died before my friend. 
During her short life he was much with her, and took much 
devoted care of her. His name was the only one she ever 
learned to speak. She used to utter it with evident pleasure, 
though she never acquired a filial syllable. It was beautiful to 
see his large, strong, protecting presence with the litttle, spirit- 
ual, slowly-vanishing child. And now both are gone. He was 
found dead one morning, lying apparently in all the pride of his 
strength and beauty, as if he had simply fallen painlessly alseep. 
Shall I ever meet him again? I have strong faith in it. Surely 
he and we are as well worth preserving as the twelve basketsful 



61 

of fragments picked up that there might be no waste. Mean- 
time, his memory is warm, dear, beautiful, — altogether as lovely 
as pure fidelity, a generous disposition, intelligence without am- 
bition and delicate manners could make recollection. He was 
impeded in his speech, not dumb, yet not quite articulate; but 
his efforts to speak were touching, pathetic, and very expres- 
sive. His name was Bruce. 

Line ii, CXX, is measured thus: 

5 ir Uci''- rir t\tfA\\ 

CXXHI. Frederick L. Hosmer. See the public Notes. My 
classmate at College, and my friend. A character of singular 
sweetness, firmness, prudence, courage — a being made up of ad- 
mirable balances covered all over with a rare taste and a lovely 
refinement. He hath also as fine, delicate and quaint humor as 
any I know, which sparkles in his talk and in his letters and 
often gives to his smile a peculiar charm. Here follows a Christ- 
mas Hymn or carol by him, of beautiful quality and marked with 
the admirable, perfect finish of all his metrical composition: 

DISCIPLESHIP. 

On the Judaean hills 
Would I have seen the light 
The watching shepherds saw, 
Turning to noon the night? 
Would I have seen the star 
That new in heaven shone, 
And followed with the few 
The new-born Christ to own? 

And if mine ears had heard 
The Man of Galilee 
Speaking from heart aflame 
The Truth that maketh free. 
Turning from priest and scribe, 
Dead rite, and parchment roll, — 
Would I have hailed in him 
A Prophet of the Soul? 



62 

Those words upon the mount, 
By way sides, in the town, — 
! Unwelcome to his time, 

Now Holy Scripture grown, — 
Would I have read in them 
A message from on high. 
Or joined the multitude 
Who cried out Crucify? 

Ah, vain for you or me 

To question thus the Past! 

Not then but now for us 

The fateful choice is cast; 

Ever the larger faith 

Makes way 'mid doubt and scorn, 

And in its latest word 

Anew the Christ is born. 

The true disciples they, 

The wide earth o'er, who own 

Truth in her manger low. 

Ere yet she mounts the throne: 

Who from the dead Christ's tomb 

Take not the stones to slay 

In blinded fear and rage 

The living Christ to-day. 

They hear the angels' song, 
'Tis they who see the light 
The watching shepherds saw 
Making the heavens bright: 
They see the self-same star 
O'er Bethlehem that shone. 
And follow joyful forth 
The new-born Christ to own. 

— Christmas, 1888. 

On receipt of this fine hymn I wrote my friend thus: 

Dear Hosmer, if to thee 
I may a greeting send, 
And let my song of love 



68 

With thine own rhythms blend, 

And then may write thee these two longer lines — 

Image of how thy song far in me shines, — 

Why, so I will! And first, 

I bless thee for thy hymn, 

As pure an advent song 

As seraph chants did brim 

That morn; for that the only Christmas lay 

Which sings that Christ not came but comes alwayT 

And next I bless thee, friend, 

For thine own self, with joy; 

More than thy verse, thyself 

Dost all my verse employ. 

For though so rare and rich thy numbers roll. 

Thy sweetest poem, comrade, is thy soul. 

One other Christmas greeting: 

Dear Hosmer, often I rehearse 

Unto myself thy goodness, worth; 

But could I write it in a verse 

Worthy to be observed by one 

Who, like thee, makes words music, then 

I would proclaim it round the earth 

Till known to all the busy men 

Who walk beneath this Christmas sun. 

But as such verse I can not write. 

Or dip my stile in such a light, 

I can but whisper in thine ear 

That thou art good, my comrade dear; 

And having said, silence again 

Shall shield thee from my pen. 

CXXIV. [Martha T.Welch. Like no one else — only her own 
self. A perfect quietness, and yet somehow glowing, like a deep 
water with high noon over it. This glow surrounded me with 
a light till this Sonnet was illumined, whereby I drew it forth 
from its hiding place. 



64 

CXXV. Emma H. Roche. A spirit with an immense hold 
on life, a certain passionate livingness, if so I may express it, 
which embraces not merely this life and , another life, not earth 
and heaven, but life itself, by a fervor which is part love and 
part thought. I could not but sing the kind incident which the 
Sonnet records quite literally. 

CXXVI. Frederick C. Wilson — a fine and intellectual and de- 
vout young spirit. To his mother, a character of firm, noble, 
religious texture, beloved and honored of all who know her, I 
offered reverently the In Memoriam songs that follow: 

MEMOREM ME DICES. 
I. 

precious inmate of my heart, 
My lad, my son, my gentle one. 
Thou hadst one only mortal part. 
But two immortal; which do run 
A race celestial never to be done. . 

Thy mortal part — I saw it die; 

1 heard a knell, the temple fell, 
And at my feet did ruins lie 

In broken beauty; and did swell 

My heart with woe of love no voice can tell. 

Of thy immortal souls the first 

Doth live in me, and give to me 

Such power that pain may do his worst 

And can not slay me: life of thee 

And bliss of thee make heaven of memory. 

Immortal, next, thou fliest abroad 

Unmoored from place, and leav'st no trace; 

But all the infinite of God 

Giveth thee freedom; that thy face 

Now looks on me from every star of space. 



65 



And so, thou precious of my heart, 
A sweet farewell! It is no knell, 
This song, that follows where thou art 
Veiled from my vision; there's a bell 
Up in my heart-tower ringing, All is well! 

II. 

EVER! and NEVER! 
What words have rung, to tie or sever. 
Within a love-tasked human soul. 
Like these that o'er my spirit roll 
From thee, beloved — thy EVER 

And NEVER! I can not see 
Thy precious form; nor voice of thee 
My ear can hold; I can not wind 
Thee in my arms; nor hands can find 
Where thy hands be: All this for me 

Comes NEVER! But in me be 
Thy presences; the heart of thee 
Lives in my heart; in me is shrined 
Thy gentle soul; still doth my mind 
Commune with thee: All this for me 

Comes EVER! In thy brief stage 
Being perfected thou lived'st an age; 
Therefore 'tis love as long as pure 
That binds me thee with bonds that dure 
EVER, and parting do presage 

NEVER! Thy soul doth wake 
With living thoughts where light doth break; 
For things of beauty thou didst choose, 
And them in guiles of self didst lose 
NEVER, but loved'st for their own sake 

EVER! Thence more nor ever 
Rang words of life, to tie or sever. 
Nor meaning bore unto my soul. 
Nor did from thee, my loved one, roll 
Through me, like these— thy NEVER, 

And EVER! 



66 

CXXVII. Frank A. Wait. A gentle, manly, home-loving and 
home-binding soul of young manhood, the stay alike of wife and 
of mother, "two households." 

CXXXVII, CXXXVIII, CXXXIX. A sequence. 

CXXXVIII. Line 12 is measured thus: 

Mr Mr 5 5irr ifgHr ii 

CXLI. The eighth line originally was, "My one particular im- 
portant hat;" and I must own that in that particular place I 
part with it with regret, and am not sure by any means that what 
I have substituted is better. 

CXLVI. Written at the time of the first threatening break 
in the splendid roll of my days of supple health and strength 
and unbroken work. 

CXLIX. Line 12 is measured thus: 

r n I r- I r ^5 1 r Mr- 



THE CAMEOS. 

XXin. Bertha T. Lewis — a dear young friend and member 
of my congregation, who hath blessed my house by being much 
in it. She hath a winsome and bright enthusiasm and intellec- 
tual desires which give her a comrade-quality even for me who 
am so much her senior Happy and prized memories invest 
her in my mind — memories of frolics and wheel-rides and serious 
talk. See note on Sonnets XCII and XCHI. Sister to Marion, 
Cameos XLV, XLVL 



67 



XXIV. Minnie C. Hughes. Of all the dear and noble friends 
of whom I have written, this one alone I never have seen. She 
read one of my books (More than Kin) and then wrote me a 
brief, quaint letter asking for some friendship and saying that a 
common friend had told her I was not hard to come to. Thence 
has ensued a correspondence which is one of the riches of my 
life. Her letters are very beautiful, and full of a certain frank 
and lovely pervasion which plainly is her very self and honest 
being. She is also a lover of Nature and looks about her with 
a heart-full eye. Wherefore, her letters are full of touches like 
the following: ''The mists roll back from the bay just as we 
turn from it, but the sun is still wrapped in its sheet and playing 
at ghost." "And here [writing from a tropical place] the flow- 
ers, the flowers! Can I take them close enough to my soul? 
Rich, delicate, profuse, I revel in their tints and perfume. I 
pluck a whole heart-full from every garden I pass." "There 
will be a time when I can talk to thee, and I await it. For now 
I must be content to send thee simple greetings from the soft 
air, the flowers and the sunshine. The blessings of their being 
be with thee." "The West, too, held its burden of delight; for 
there behind the Olympics the great, glorious sun was sinking 
down so heavily it seemed to pull the skies in after it. Oh! it 
is strange to believe but good to know that there are other 
scenes as fair as ours." "There was a delightful lesson for me 
yesterday. In the midst of our garden of roses a lady nearly 
eighty years of age handed me a bouquet of wild grasses." "The 
full glare of day, this after all seems scarcely a more true light 
than the sweet shadows of the evening or of a distance." But 
not by any excerpts can I convey the charm of her letters; 
for their charm is not beauties so much as beauty, a lovely ef- 
fluence of joined heart and mind. She hath favored me with 
some songs, "true and unfeigned verse," from her pen — of which 
I will give one here: 



68 



MY TALISMAN. 

Golden curls all tossed awry, 
Rosy cheeks where dimples lie, 
Eyes so like an April sky. 

My talisman! 

Cares and trials, sorrow, pain. 
Flaunt their ensigns all in vain; 
Here's the charm to rend their chain — 
My talisman! 

Let them siege me like the rest; 
Calm, unmoved I bear the test. 
While I clasp you to my breast. 
My talisman! 

' 'Should I lose you" — Softly, stay! 
See — I'll weave our souls this way; 
Now not death can wrest away 

My talisman! 

XXV. Belle G. Scribner. A descriptive stanza. No more 
than the truth, nay, not so much — whether it be of the beauty 
of her faithful spirit, or of her kind and brave brown eyes joined 
with her soft and shining blonde hair — a very unusual and lovely 
combination of features, and very significant; for it betokens great 
sweetness united with a firm will, and both combined into a 
rich loyalty, constancy and faithfulness. When sadly I left the 
pulpit dear to me for many long and full years, she wrote me 
a letter of kind and affectionate recollection for which my soul 
thanks her always. 

XXVI. Anna W. Edwards. I write of her for three traits that 
move eye, and ear and thought toward her: She is a very 
Muse of dancing, moving with a light and fine grace; she hath 
dark, luminous auburn tresses, abundant and very beautiful ; and 
she inhabits a stillness which ariseth from a domestic heart and 
from a certain excellent poise of mind. She moves promptly 



69 

for service in emergency, but as softly as a shadow. Noise avoids 
her. Feeling may tremble quickly in tone or tear, but there- 
with she has a quality to confer rest. 

XXVIL Eva G. Wanzer. See Note to Sonnet CX. The 
Cameo had origin when first I met her after ceasing to be her 
minister. 

XXVIII. Mary L. Lord. Like Cameo XXVII, this arose 
from the church parting. What revelations partings and divers 
manners of sad changes are! How they uncover heroisms and 
devotions! See Sonnet CII, and note thereon. 

XXIX. My girls, my friends, my playmates. At end of a 
sportive and happy summer, one went away, back to her work 
at a distance. See Sonnets XCII, XCIII, and note thereon. 

XXX. Virginia S. Brannon. She hath such a face and soul 
wherewith to convey her listening that to speak in her pres- 
ence is a happy accepting of aid and inspiration. She was one 
of a group (Cameos XXXI, XXXII, XXXIII, XXXIV) who 
went with me one glorious Autumn Sunday when, having left 
during the Summer the church they belonged to, I resumed my 
service of a little church in a suburb of this great city. Ahl 
what a day! — an endearing day, and memorable also for mental 
communion. No one of them knew nor all together could dream 
the blessedness and power unto me of their presence that day. 
And not least, nor ever little, to me thy presence, my friend; and 
thy epistle of parting is treasured. 

XXXI. Minnie C. Reuter. This is to be understood in light 
of all these five Cameos, XXX — XXXIV. This my friend hath 
given me much company a-wheel also, and especially during one 
summer she, with another (Cameo XXX) was with me often 
in enchanting night rides memorable. She listened to me many 



70 

years with that manner of listening which confers hope on the 
speaker that he saith not all amiss. Happy and rich memories 
cling about her in my thoughts, and I own me her true debtor, 
both for long helpfulness from her earnest spirit and for her pres- 
ence on that glorious first Sunday when Heaven seemed to empty 
upon the earth. 

XXXII. Anna H. Bregger. A true, dear friend. Admirable, 
lovely as woman, as wife, as mother. Her presence blessed that 
great Sunday. She came but late into my life, but her hus- 
band dates for me afar back. We are "old friends" now. He 
is much my junior; but I never think of it; I meet him with all 
the reverence due to an equal whose excellencies beyond me 
my soul acknowledges with joy — "one of Nature's noblemen," 
whose love is an honor and as steadfast as the heavens. Their 
simple home is "sweetness and light." 

XXXni. Alice Hayward. Present on that glowing Sunday, 
and her presence a power both of help and of happiness. The 
Cameo describes her — I need add naught. 'Tis plain I owe her 
much. One year after the burning of our church and the utter 
destruction of its grand organ, she wrote me a letter referring 
to our loss and then to my withdrawal from that pulpit, and in- 
closing a Sonnet written at the anniversary of the fire. I will 
quote from the letter and give the Sonnet, for I cannot better 
show the character of my friend. She says: "Evolved out of 
deep, sad feeling is the Sonnet which I have written and now 
enclose. I ask your pardon for the many imperfections it has, 
trusting you to understand just the circumstances and occasion 
of the writing of it. It is, in first error, too much in narrative 
style. That might be justified in part by a certain time tone 
all through it. I have tried to be impersonal, acting on the 
principle that the highest beauty is to get a thing implied. In 
using the word 'reigned' I had in mind the idea of elevation and 



71 

ascendency, to the complete exclusion of the idea of domination. 
And so I dare to offer it to you, asking pardon for its faults, 
but sturdily asserting, though sorrowfully, the thought which oc- 
casioned it." Inclosed was the following lovely and touching 
Sonnet: 

IN MEMORIAM. 

"We live in deeds, not years," the poet said; 
And gently came a whisper ever new — 

"Not what we did but what we strove to do." 
Yet time leaves traces. Sadly backward led 
In thought, we rue one autumn day whose red 
No color-glory wrought; but fiend-like through 
A hallowed place it strode, and tramped from view 
The home a few revered, with searing tread. 
The snow-time came, and then th' awakening spring, 
And though the house was gone, the life remained: 
But ere the summer passed, a greater grief 
Than loss of home or organ-tone could bring 
Befell that life. We grope for Ihozight that reigned. 
In vain. The color's gone from heart and leaf. 
October 25, 1896. 

XXXIV. Clara H. Mahony — in the group of that endeared 
and memorable Sunday. See Sonnet CIII and note. 

XXXV. Louise W. Russell. Younger than most of the 
friends whom my song elects, but a very womanly nature and 
sweet presence, whose gentle truthfulness, especially in some ac- 
cents of voice that I have heard, stirred these lines in me. And 
here I will refer to her parents who have been truth in friend- 
ship. Especially her father, Francis C. Russell, a notable student 
and thinker in philosophy and mathematics, and a lover of poesy, 
and a religious soul, hath endowed me with conversations which 
remain perennial light and joy to me. He is enthusiastic for the 
wheel. What long, ambling rides and long, thoughtful converse 
therewith we have had! 



72 

XXXVI, XXXVII. See Sonnet CIX, and note. 

XXXVIII. Jennie Edwards. These lines arose from a very 
gentle loving kindness of her. I had visited the school where 
she taught and had sought and seen other friends there, but had 
overlooked her schoolroom — and was sorry when I bethought 
me afterward of the over-sight — and met her soon afterward 
doubtfully, fearing a reproving or slighted look. But she was a 
sweet, simple grace and sincere kindness and in answer to my ex- 
pression of regret she said only, "Then still I wait." Manner 
and words together were an eloquence that seized and enrap- 
tured me. Sister of Anna, Cameo XXVI. 

XLI, XLII. Katherine E. Tuley, wife of Hon. Judge Tuley, 
a jurist of very honorable station and authority. Mrs. Tuley 
hath made her goodness and grace one of the great honors and 
rewards of my life. I met her first in an epistle which most 
kindly she wrote me about one of my books "More than Kin," 
and I was blessed exceedingly. Some time afterward she wrote 
me another letter about the same book, and then, after a little, 
a young friend of us both took me to see her in the home 
which her spiritual being pervades. Unto me it was a mem- 
orable visit, and others since then like unto it, with which I 
have been privileged; yea, and other letters full of the strength, 
the beauties, the joys, the exaltations, inspirations, which such 
a soul hath quality to bestow. These be forces which none know 
her without perceiving, for which, given unto me, affection and 
gratefulness arise reverently. I would I might quote from the 
beauty of her letters, but they concern me too nearly. Of XLII, 
see public note. 

XLIII. Alice D.Wiley. My words tell the truth of her. She 
so shows the soul a-wing for every goodness and beauty that 
we "thank God such things exist." I have many brave and 



78 

glowing letters from her, full of thoughts and feelings that burn 
their way aloft; from one of which letters I will quote a tender 
Sonnet she wrote on leaving a little low cottage that had been 
her home many years: 

This low, small roof where we have lived so long, 

How stored with memories! Have I said, "A den, 

Crowded, and wintry cold?" I add, But then 

How snow-flakes blossom! How in summer throng 

The bees to pilfer poppies! How through the song 

Of my canary wind harps! Robin, wren, 

Breathe Nature's prayer to tree-tops' low Amen! 

And strength hath come to turn from grief and wrong ! — 

Yea, to do daily duties none may spare, 

To see the harvest of the soul grow fair, 

To walk with friends beloved, all unaware 

How near the message calling them outside 

Of our small lives. O Love, which must abide, 

This roof we leave thou hast full sanctified! 

XLIV. Julia M. E. Hintermiester. O devout spirit, what 
power to lift and to enlarge and to bless thou art! And though 
thou speakest often, and to purpose, yet art thou so still with 
the Spirit that one may say thou art ^'silent in five languages," 
the English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, which thou writ- 
est and speakest. Dost remember a walk thou tookest me round 
about, to see "a very rich tree," arrived at which thou saidst, 
"Behold a tree so rich as to have two oriole's nests — one were 
much, but a tree so rich as to have two!" — dost remember? I 
do — nor shall forget. 

XLV, XLVI. Marion M. Lewis. Sister of Bertha, Cameo 
XXIII. Her delicate beauty, warm in color, and very gentle 
and thought-full, always hath been a charm to my eyes, but never 
more lovely than on the Norwegian evening — a picturesque party 
at her home wherein her mother read a narrative of her travels 



74 

in Norway, illustrated with fine pictures, and Marion, with other 
young girls, dressed in the peasant costumes of Norway, served 
the company a purely Norwegian repast. Then knocked the 
Cameo, XLV, at the door of my fancy, I sent it to her unsigned, 
but she guessed the source, and sent me the following: 

Oh, happy me, so blessed to be 

That I among my friends 

Remember one, Apollo's son, 

Who such a tribute sends 

To beauty's shrine! O, not to mine; 

For wisdom telleth me, 

That the beholder's eye contains 

The beauty he may see. 

On receipt of this, the music of her seized me again and I 
wrote Cameo XLVI; but sent it not — she first will see it in this 
book. 

XLVII. Georgine Mahony. A dear and heart-waking girl, 
very generous, very brave, full of a fine kind of life, and rich in 
humorous, contagious spirit. Daughter of Clara H. Son- 
net cm. Cameo XXXIV. Her birthday came, and I knew it 
not and reproached her for my being left untold; she answered, 
"Would you have written me a poem?" This touched me much. 
Hence the Cameo, which I ofifer affectionately, wishing it were 
more. 

XLVni. Agnes C. Montgomery. A near and dear friend for 
twenty full years. I know not around whom have gathered 
things needing more strength and wisdom; and she hath been 
strong and wise and brave. I remember quoting to her once 
Emerson's words (from memory), "The highest compact one 
can make with his comrade is. Let there be truth between us 
twain forevermore," She seized on it; and there hath been truth. 



76 

and entire mutual trust; which humbly I hope to deserve more, 
as she always hath deserved. 

XLIX. Eva F. Davis. My faithful, true friend these many 
years, as witness many letters, posies of wild-flowers, and such 
thoughtfulness in other ways as is the tribute of a true and fine 
heart; nor less true is my friendship to her, though I cannot recall 
that I have had grace to make it so useful and happy to her 
as she hath done for me. I never think of her without a flush 
of reverence which is a spiritual sustenance unto me; for she 
hath been heavenly wealthy in the pure devotion of her life and 
in her intellectual fervor, also. She reads much and hath had 
the habit of recording and copying, neatly and carefully in a 
considerable book, passages in her reading which seized on her 
mind. When the book was full and finished, she gave it to 
me. What a gift! A treasure-book of so rare a kind as to be 
filled as much with herself as with the fine sayings she hath 
collected. 

Joseph Henry Allen, D. D. See Note on Sonnet XXXVI. 
Since that note was written, this simple-grand, child-hearted, 
man-hearted, venerable and noble scholar iit ad plures — March 
20, 1898. For many years I have loved him for the simple-grand 
heart and soul that he was, and revered him as facile princeps 
among those elder scholars of our Household of Faith in this 
country who were an ancient and honorable guild of wide and 
large learning as apart from the merely textual or technical. 
That guild may be said to have ended among us with him. He 
was a noble and enlarged example of that illustrious fellowship 
of thought and letters. But ample as his learning was, and noble 
example of the dignity of letters as he was, he was far more than 
scholar. He was a man, whose heart throbbed with every inter- 
est of humanity. And withal so simple, so large of spirit, so 
nobly respectful of everyone, so endearing (if I may be bold 



76 

to use such a term of such a man — I do it reverently) that all 
might approach him easily, none debarred that presence equally 
genial, admonitory, instructive. The precious visits with which 
he has honored me! The walks and rides! And therein the con- 
verse! What riches! Sometimes they were glorious monologues 
into which some chance observation would lead him, to which 
I listened as one walks in sunlight, a recipient of what one can 
return in no other way than by receiving gladly. Not long be- 
fore he "joined the choir invisible," he wrote me a letter to tell 
me that he held my humble work as a minister to be "the kind 
of success which most honors a man" — words which from him 
might be the prize before a life's endeavor, and the reward after 
it. Since the mystery and sanctity of what we call Death now 
inhabits the sky of my love and reverence unto him, grant me, I 
pray you, that it is not amiss that I have quoted the above words 
wherein he hath re-enforced me both unto labor and unto cheer 
of heart. 

Hazen J. Burton. Though no verse hath visited me to 
make occasion for this note, yet I can not end my book without 
speaking of this, my friend, to you all, as I have spoken of you 
to him herein. He is a man of large, generous affairs, great 
scope of skill, energy and judgment, and noble mercantile suc- 
cess. But this is but small mention of him. His great nobility 
of success is in the nature of soul and mind, the largeness and 
height of moral and spiritual life, the estimation of mental, eth- 
ical and ideal values, which his great cares and business have 
left undimmed in him, nay, advanced and exalted. Happy were 
it for all our cities if we had a race of large merchants like to 
him. One beautiful sunny Sunday, never to be forgotten nor 
its impression of it to fade from me, he gave me his company in 
a long walk in this city; and what things he said! What 
thoughts of ideals he uttered! What purposes of life he set forth! 



77 

But not only admiration for the general, but gratefulness and 
love for myself I owe him, and pay in heart; as you will know 
well when I say that out of my ten books four would have had 
no existence but for him; and he hath come to my aid in this 
one also with resources which I had not. One book, "More 
than Kin," I wrote on purpose to apply worthily of him, if I 
could, some means that unexpectedly he placed in my hands for 
any literary work I chose to do. I had no time, as my duties 
were, to do justice to his generous aid in the ordinary course of 
my work. Therefore I arose an hour earlier every day for a 
year, and so in the fresh mornings wrote the book. I would it 
might express to him better the good he hath done me every 
way, and not least by the beauty of his manhood. 



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